JOHN   WEBSTER 

and  the 

ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA 

liy 

RUPERT  BROOKE 

1 

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ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA 


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"It  is  packed  with  the  stufif  of  which  poetry 
is  made:  vivid  imagination,  the  phrase  that 
leaps  to  life,  youth,  music,  and  the  ecstasy 
born  of  their  joy  when  genius  keeps  them  com- 
pany."— The  Outlook. 


JOHN    LANE    COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS  NEW    YORK 


JOHN  WEBSTER  and  the 

ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA 

By  RUPERT  BROOKE 


JOHN    LANE    COMPANY 
NEW  YORK      .-.      .-.      .-.      MCMXVI 


Copyright,  1916, 
By  John  Lane  Company 


Press  of 

J.  J.  Little  &  Ives  Company 

New  York,  U.S.A. 


V-; 


NOTE 

This  hook  was  written  in  1911-12,  and  was  the 
^dissertation'  with  which  the  author  won  his  Fellow- 
ship at  King's  College,  Cambridge,  in  1913. 

The  page-references  are  to  Dyce's  one-volume 

edition. 

E.M. 


4  \J,*<^ 


C^"'  *'"' 


PREFACE 

I  HAVE  tried  to  write  a  small  book  about  John 
Webster.  That  is  to  say,  I  have  tried  to  say 
the  truth  about  him,  as  much  of  it  as  is 
necessary  to  enable  anyone  who  reads  him  to 
understand  him.  I  have  not  tried  to  explain  him 
entirely  to  anyone  who  has  not  read  him,  though 
I  hope  that  any  person  in  that  condition  may 
get  a  rough  idea  of  him  from  this  book. 

I  have  tried  to  explain  Webster  for  a  reader, 
but  not  to  explain  him  away.  So  I  have  endeav- 
oured to  keep  to  my  own  province,  and  not  to 
trespass  on  ground  reserved  for  worthier  feet — 
Webster's.  I  conceive  that  there  is  much  that  he 
can  explain  better  than  I.  So  I  have,  at  least, 
abstained  from  paraphrasing. 

To  explain  Webster's  writings  it  is  first  neces- 
sary to  determine  what  he  wrote,  and  also  such 
smaller  questions  as  when  he  wrote  it,  and  how 
he  came  to  write  it.  Such  questions,  the  ques- 
tions of  "scientific"  literary  criticism,  I  deal  with 
in  the  Appendices.  I  have  taken  some  care  to 
get  the  most  probable  answers  in  each  case;  for 
there  is  such  a  lot  of  bad  logic  and  fudging  on 

vii 


viii  PREFACE 

such  points  in  modern  literary  science,  that  one 
always  has  to  go  over  the  whole  ground  com- 
pletely for  oneself. 

When  these  points  are  settled,  with  as  much 
certitude  as  possible,  there  are  still  other  points 
on  which  it  is  necessary  to  have  right  opinions  in 
order  to  understand  Webster.  One  must  know 
what  a  play  is;  one  must  laiow  how  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama  arose;  and  one  must  know  what 
the  Elizabethan  drama  was.  I  have  given  a 
chapter  to  each  of  these  points;  not  pretending 
to  cover  the  whole  ground,  or  to  do  the  work  of 
a  whole  book;  but  endeavouring  to  correct  some 
of  the  more  misleading  wrong  ideas,  and  to  hint 
at  some  of  the  more  important  right  ones.  These 
chapters,  of  course,  though  nominally  not  about 
Webster,  should  be  even  more  important  to  any 
understanding  of  him  than  the  Appendices.  And 
I  have  given  two  long  chapters  to  the  more 
direct  consideration  of  what  Webster  wrote,  and 
what  its  more  usual  characteristics  are. 

The  Bibliography  is,  I  think,  fairly  complete 
with  regard  to  Webster.  I  did  not  think  it  neces- 
sary to  make  a  bibliography  of  books  on  the 
wider  subjects. 

It  may  seem,  in  some  cases,  as  if  I  contra- 
dicted myself  in  different  parts  of  the  book;  as, 
for  instance,  when  I  say  that  it  is  impossible  to 


PREFACE  ix 

understand  a  play  wholly  from  the  text,  and  later 
seem  to  believe  that  I  do  understand  plays  wholly 
from  the  text.  I  think  I  have  not  really  contra- 
dicted myself.  Part  of  the  business  of  the  earlier 
chapters  is  to  prevent  the  necessity  of  continually 
repeated  qualifications  throughout  the  work.  To 
express  my  exact  meaning  on  each  occasion 
would  have  meant  covering  the  page  with 
"in  so  far  as  it  is  possible's,"  and  "I  think's,"  and 
"possibly's,"  and  "perhaps's";  which  makes  the 
style  feeble  and  muffles  the  idea.  I  have,  per- 
haps, gone  too  far  in  this  direction  already. 


CONTENTS 


Preface     ....••* 

CHAPTEB 

I.  The  Theatre    .... 

II.  The  Origins  of  Elizabethan  Drama 

III.  The  Elizabethan  Drama   . 

»^IV.  John  Webster   .... 

i  V,  Some  Characteristics  of  Webster 


PAGE 

vii 

15 

38 

62 

84 

123 


Appendices 

A.  The  Authorship  of  the  later  Appius  and  Virginia  l65 


^^.  Miscellaneous 

C.  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt 

D.  Westward  Ho  and  Northrvard  Ho 

E.  The  Malcontent  . 

F.  The  White  Devil  . 

G.  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  . 
H.  A  Monumental  Column 

I.  The  DeviVs  Law-case  . 
J.  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  . 

1/ Bibliography      .... 


211 
214 
222 
234 
237 
246 
254 
255 
260 

277 


JOHN  WEBSTER  and  the 
ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA 


JOHN  WEBSTER 

Chapter  I 

THE  THEATRE 

Anyone  who  has  read,  with  any  alertness,  more 
than  a  little  of  the  mass  of  critical  and  editorial 
comments,  whether  of  the  last  three  or  of  the  last 
three  hundred  years,  upon  Elizabethan  plays, 
must  often  have  felt  a  helpless  and  bewildered 
irritation  at  the  absence  of  any  standard  or  uni- 
form grounds  of  judgment;  both  in  the  critics, 
and,  on  inspection,  in  himself.  This  is  not  the 
place  to  attempt  to  lay  a  deep  aesthetic  founda- 
tion; but,  I  think,  it  will  be  useful  to  try  to  fix 
the  meanings  of  certain  words  and  phrases,  and 
to  give  a  provisional  answer  to  some  of  the  more 
important  questions. 

"What  is  Art?"  is  a  question  which  most 
writers  on  subjects  connected  with  literature, 
painting,  plays,  music,  society,  or  life,  are  ready 
with  an  equal  cheerfulness  to  ask  or  to  answer. 
They  may  be  right;  but  to  me  they  seem  to  make 

15 


16  JOHN  WEBSTER 

a  gigantic,  unconscious,  and  probably  unjustifi- 
able assumption.  It  is  quite  doubtful,  and  it  is 
nowadays  continually  more  doubted,  whether  the 
word  "Art"  has  properly  any  meaning  at  all. 
But  it  has  so  obsessed  men's  minds,  that  they 
start  with  an  inevitable  tendency  to  believe  that 
it  has  a  meaning.  In  the  same  way,  those  who 
believe  in  Art  are  generally  inclined  to  believe  in 
a  single  object  at  which  all  Art,  that  is  to  say  all 
the  arts,  aim:  Beauty.  It  may  turn  out  to  be 
true  that  both  Art  and  Beauty  are  real  and 
useful  names;  but  the  attitude  of  mind  that  as- 
sumes that  they  are  is  deplorable.  The  most 
honest  and  most  hopeful  course  to  pursue,  is  to 
say  that  there  are  certain  kinds  of  human  activity 
which  seem  to  hang  together  in  classes,  such  as 
reading  books,  hearing  music,  seeing  pictures; 
and  to  examine  our  states  of  mind  while  we  fol- 
low these  pursuits,  to  see  how  far  they  are  of 
one  kind  in  each  "art,"  and  in  all,  and  whether 
all  successful  works  of  art  do  seem  to  us  to  have 
some  quality  in  common  which  can  be  called 
Beauty. 

The  situation  seems  to  me  as  if  men  had  agreed 
to  say  "The  emotions  caused  in  human  beings 
by  pins,  walking-sticks,  feathers,  and  crowbars, 
acting  through  the  tactile  sense,  are  all  of  one 
unique  kind.     It  is  called  Grumph.    Pins,  etc., 


THE  THEATRE  17 

are  called  the  grumphs.  Grumph  is  one  of  the 
holiest  things  in  this  melancholy  world,"  and  so 
forth.  And  soon  they'd  say,  "But,  philosophi- 
cally, what  is  Grumph?"  Then  they'd  argue. 
They  would  come  to  some  conclusion  which,  as 
you  cannot  tickle  with  a  crowbar,  would  pre- 
clude tickling  with  feathers;  and  they  would  ex- 
communicate all  those  who  used  feathers  for 
tickling  with  the  formula,  "That  is  not 
Grumph!"  They  would  write  Treatises  on  any 
one  grumph,  on  the  "Pin-grumph,"  say,  care- 
fully keeping  in  mind  all  the  time  that  what  they 
said  would  have  to  be  more  or  less  true  of  the 
other  grumphs  too.  Some  would  lay  great  im- 
portance on  the  fact  that,  as  you  were  tickled 
with  feathers,  you  were,  in  a  way,  also  tickled  by 
being  beaten  with  a  walking-stick.  Others 
would  discover  the  ferule  of  the  pin,  and  the 
quill,  shaft,  and  two  vanes  of  barbs  of  the  crow- 
bar. An  Oxford  don  would  arise  to  declare  that 
all  grumph  continually  approximated  to  the  con- 
dition of  pins.  .  .  . 

I  have  put  the  affair,  as  I  see  it,  in  a  figure, 
and  with  other  names,  in  order  to  show  its  un- 
reason more  clearly,  and  far  more  shortly,  than 
is  possible  if  the  prejudice-clad  and  elusive  word 
"Art"  is  used.  In  either  case,  the  sensible  reply 
to  it  all  is,  "We  have  sticks  and  pins,  plays  and 


18  JOHN  WEBSTER 

poems.  These  we  know.  These  are,  as  certainly 
as  anything  is,  real  classes  of  things.  Begin  from 
them,  and  from  the  emotions  they  move.  And 
see  if  thence  you  climb  upwards  to  Grumph,  to 
Art.'' 

This  attitude  does,  directly  or  indirectly,  shut 
out  various  bands  of  ideas  and  thinkers ;  my  ob- 
jections to  each  of  which  I  could  state  at  length. 
A  short  enumeration  of  these  tendencies  of  mind 
in  viewing  questions  of  "Art"  may  hint  why, 
psychologically  at  any  rate,  they  seem  to  me  non- 
starters.  In  the  first  place,  I  do  not  admit  the 
claims  of  anyone  who  says,  "There  is  such  a 
thing  as  Beauty,  because  when  a  man  says, 
'This  is  beautiful,'  he  does  not  mean,  'This  is 
lovely,'  or,  'This  provokes  the  cosmic  emotion.' 
There  is  such  a  thing  as  Art;  because  the  sen- 
tence: 'Pictures,  Poetry,  Music,  etc.,  are  Art,' 
is  not  the  same  as  'Pictures,  Poetry,  Music,  etc., 
are  Music,  Poetry,  Pictures  k.  t.  x.'  "  I  am  not 
concerned  with  what  men  may  mean.  They  fre- 
quently mean  and  have  meant  the  most  astound- 
ing things.  It  is,  possibly,  true  that  when  men 
say,  "This  is  beautiful,"  they  do  not  mean  "This 
is  lovely."  They  may  mean  that  the  esthetic 
emotion  exists.  My  only  comments  are  that  it 
does  not  follow  that  the  aesthetic  emotion  does 


THE  THEATRE  19 

exist,  and  that,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  they  are 
wrong. 

But  the  only  way  to  prove  them  right  or  wrong 
is  by  introspection  into  our  states  of  mind  when 
we  hear  music  or  see  pictures. 

It  has  been  acutely  said  that,  in  philosophy, 
it  is  important  to  give  the  right  answers,  but  even 
more  important  to  ask  the  right  questions.  So 
here.  Better  than  to  ask  "What  is  Art?"  is  it 
to  ask  "What  do  you  feel  before  this  picture?" 
"Before  that  picture?"  "Is  there  anything  com- 
mon between  your  feelings  in  these  two  cases?" 
"What  do  you  feel  in  hearing  this,  and  that,  piece 
of  music?"  "Is  there  anything  common?"  and 
then,  "Is  there  anything  common  between  what 
you  feel  before  all  these  pictures  and  what  you 
feel  in  hearing  all  this  music?"  "And  if  so,  what 
is  it?"  "Is  it  important?"  One  of  the  perils 
attending  on  those  who  ask  the  first  question  is 
that  they  tend,  as  all  men  do,  to  find  what  they 
are  looking  for:  a  common  quality  in  Art.  And 
also  that  they  tend  to  exalt  what  they  discover 
for  this  quality,  above  the  others  that  are  to  be 
found  in  any  of  the  arts.  People  who  start  in 
this  way  are  apt  to  be,  practically,  a  most  in- 
tolerable nuisance  both  to  critics  and  to  artists; 
whether  it  is  Art  or  any  one  art  that  they  would 
tie  to  their  rule.     Art  is  Pattern;  and  a  novel 


20  JOHN  WEBSTER 

that  lacks  "pattern"  is  not  Art,  and  therefore 
bad.  Art  is  the  perception  of  the  individual 
case;  so  morality  plays  are  illegitimate.  Art  is 
the  emphasising  of  the  generality;  so  Hamlet, 
except  in  so  far  as  the  hero  represents  all  neuro- 
paths, is  a  perverse  and  downward  path  from 
the  moralities.  Art  must  be  moral;  so  Shake- 
speare's sonnets  are  what  Hallam  thought  them. 
Art  has  no  connection  with  morality ;  so  Paradise 
Lost  and  Pilgrim's  Progress  are,  artistically, 
worthless.  A  play  must  display  a  "develop- 
ment,'' a  tragedy  must  involve  a  conflict ;  music 
must  have  a  tune ;  a  picture  may  not  tell  a  story. 
.  .  .  The  list  of  these  perilous  and  presumptu- 
ous a  priori  limitations  could  go  on  for  ever.  Of 
the  wrong  ways  of  approaching  the  subject  of 
"Art,"  or  even  of  any  one  art,  this  is  the  worst 
because  it  is  the  most  harmful. 

But  there  are  other  ways  in  which  precon- 
ceptions and  assumptions  about  the  thing  to  be 
looked  for  mislead,  in  the  consideration  of  Art. 
Croce  rather  naively  begins  by  noting  that  "aes- 
thetic" has  been  used  both  for  questions  of  Art 
and,  in  general  and  in  accordance  with  its  deriva- 
tion, for  perception.  So  he  sets  out  to  discover 
what  meaning  it  can  really  have,  to  apply  to 
both.  He  takes  it  for  the  one  necessary  condi- 
tion a  true  answer  about  "^Esthetics"  must  sat- 


THE  THEATRE  21 

isfy,  that  it  shall  explain  how  Art  and  Percep- 
tion are  both  included.  Having  found  such  an 
explanation,  he  is  satisfied. 

To  take  a  different  side,  most  of  the  uphold- 
ers of  the  Einfiihlungsdsthetik  seem  to  have 
founded  their  view  on  the  experiences  of  the  spec- 
tator of  certain  visual  arts,  especially  painting 
or  architecture.  In  so  far,  it  is  valuable.  But 
when  it  is  contorted  to  cover  the  other  arts,  the 
result  is  ludicrous.  So  those  who  accept  the 
Nacherleben  theory,  would  appear  to  be  extend- 
ing what  is  probably  true  about  drama  to  spheres 
where  it  is  desperately  irrelevant. 

It  is  said  that  the  figure  of  Helen,  whom  men 
have  so  eagerly  followed  and  sought,  was  a 
phantasm,  covered  by  which  there  lurked,  in  fact, 
a  knot  of  mercantile  interests  of  Greece  and  the 
Hellespont  and  the  Black  Sea;  even  as,  some 
claim,  men  who  have  died  for  the  love  of  Eng- 
land, or  Germany,  or  Italy,  have,  in  reality, 
only  given  themselves  for  a  few  rich  people.  Art 
and  Beauty  have  proved  such  delusive  Helens. 
It  is  an  extraordinary  crowd,  pouring  along  di- 
verse roads,  that  has  followed  them.  The  on- 
looker is  moved  to  amazement  and  derision.  Ros- 
setti's  "View  Halloo!"  was  less  lonely  than  he 
dreamt.  More  than  all  illusory  goddesses  has 
My  Lady  Beauty  been  chased  or  stalked,  as  a 


22  JOHN  WEBSTER 

rule  passionately,  often  irretrievably,  "in  what 
fond  flight,  how  many  ways  and  days!"  The 
ingenuity  of  the  chase  has  been  stupendous. 

"They  sought  her  with  thimbles^  they  sought  her  with  care; 
They  pursued  her  with  forks  and  hope." 

The  thimble  of  an  a  priori  generalisation  has 
not  closed  down  on  My  Lady,  nor  the  fork  of 
Dialectic  impaled  her.  For  the  quest  was  vain 
from  the  beginning.  It  is  that  conviction  that 
enables  me  so  cursorily  to  leave  such  knight-er- 
rants  to  their  task — of  "bounding  along  on  the 
tip  of  their  tail"  or  "still  clutching  the  inviola- 
ble shade,"  according  to  the  way  you  regard 
them.  We  had  best  cultivate  our  gardens  of 
the  arts.  Then  we  may  turn  round  one  day  to 
discover  Beauty  at  our  elbow — if  she  exists  at 
all.  If  she  doesn't,  we  shall  at  least  have  learnt 
horticulture. 

I  can  descend,  then,  with  a  clear  conscience 
to  occupy  myself  with  the  single  plots  of  ground 
called  Drama  and  Tragedy.  But  first  I  must 
deal  with  two  other  ways  of  approaching  the 
question  of  the  arts — for  the  arts,  as  human 
activities,  can  be  classed  together,  even  though 
there  be  no  such  obvious  similarity  discernible 
in  the  states  of  mind  they  produce,  no  "aesthetic 
emotion."     There  are  some  who  would  view  it 


THE  THEATRE  23 

all  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  artist.  "Art," 
they  say,  "is  primarily  a  creative  function  of  the 
artist;  other  people  may  profit,  afterwards,  if  it 
so  happens.  Cricket  is  a  game  played  by  twen- 
ty-two men,  under  certain  rules:  which  may  or 
may  not  be  watched  by  a  crowd.  This  is  true, 
even  though  the  game  would  not  have  been 
played  but  for  the  crowd.  Art  is  no  more  to  be 
explained  in  terms  of  the  chance  result  on  the 
spectators  than  cricket  is  to  be  explained  in 
terms  of  the  feelings  of  the  crowd.  Art  is  an 
amazing  creative  experience  of  the  artist:  what 
happens  to  the  result  of  his  travail  is  neither  here 
nor  there.  A  good  picture  is  one  in  the  creating 
of  which  the  artist  had  a  good  state  of  mind. 
And  the  utmost  a  spectator  can  hope  for  is  to 
approximate,  in  beholding  a  work  of  art,  to  the 
state  of  mind  the  artist  had  in  creating  it." 

The  last  sentence,  perhaps,  expresses  a  view 
that  need  not  logically  go  with  the  foregoing 
belief.  For  the  whole  position,  I  do  not  think 
it  can,  ultimately,  be  refuted.  It  becomes  a 
question  of  words,  or  of  the  point  of  view.  From 
where  I  stand,  I  seem  to  see  certain  activities, 
and  I  consider  them  according  to  the  aspect  that 
seems  to  me  most  important.  If  another  man 
views  and  describes  them  from  behind,  I  can  only 
lament  it.     There  are  things  to  be  said  against 


24  JOHN  WEBSTER 

him.  Certainly,  if  importance  is  to  weigh  in  the 
matter,  the  effects  on  the  audience  are  more  im- 
portant than  the  state  of  the  artist.  He  could, 
cogently,  answer  that  corn  is  corn,  though  the 
most  important  thing  about  it  is  that  it  goes  to 
make  bread.  A  greater  difficulty  is  the  extraor- 
dinary variety  of  experience  of  the  creative 
artist.  Blake  thought  he  was  taking  down  his 
writings  from  the  dictation  of  an  angel.  Some 
writers  solemnly  think  their  things  out.  Others 
are  "inspired";  or  proceed  almost  by  automatic 
writing.  Some  are  highly  excited  and  irrespon- 
sible; others  detached,  cynical,  and  calculating. 
Many  artists,  it  would  seem,  are  never  aware 
of  their  work  of  art  as  a  whole,  but  build  it  up, 
patching  and  revising  in  little  pieces.  A  play 
by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  with  the  scenes  ap- 
portioned out,  would  be  difficult  to  judge  by  this 
creative  theory.  Certainly,  if  you  take  the  case 
of  a  dancer,  who  can  never  quite  see  herself  danc- 
ing, it  seems  clear  that  the  important  whole  con- 
nected with  this  activity  is  in  the  state  of  mind 
of  the  spectator. 

Another  common  tendency,  a  fatal  and  ridicu- 
lous one,  is  that  of  the  historical  school.  Both 
the  psychology  of  the  artist  and  the  history  of 
the  arts  are  interesting,  and  may  be  valuable, 
topics  of  investigation.    But  it  should  be  clearly 


THE  THEATRE  25 

recognised  that  the  history  of  the  forms  of  the 
arts  has  no  direct  connection  with  the  arts  as  they 
are.  Football  originated  in  a  religious  ritual; 
but  it  is  not,  necessarily,  religious.  The  cooking 
of  roast  pork  arose  from  the  burning  of  a  house ; 
but  he  would  be  a  foolish  gastronomist  who,  in 
considering  cooking,  laid  great  emphasis  on  the 
fundamental  element  of  arson  in  that  art.  So 
there  are  some  who  say  that  the  arts  originated  in 
a  need  to  let  off  the  superfluous  energies  of  man, 
not  needed  to  further  or  secure  his  livelihood; 
and  therefore  are  essentially  of  the  nature  of 
play.  Others  declare  that  the  sexual  instinct 
was  at  the  bottom  of  the  beginnings  of  the  arts, 
and  that  all  Art  is,  fundamentally,  sexuality. 
Others  again  would,  for  similar  reasons,  find  it 
a  religious  activity.  To  all  such  we  can  only 
reply,  "If  your  historical  analysis  is  true,  it  is 
indeed  a  wonderful  world  in  which  we  live;  but 
now,  in  1912,  poetry  and  football  are  not  sex 
or  religion;  they  are  poetry  and  football." 

There  are  theatres;  places  where  you  see 
things.  The  things  you  see  there  generally  try 
to  represent  or  imitate  reality,  and  are  frequently 
accompanied  by  words,  in  which  cases  they  are 
called  "plays."  One  of  the  first  and  most  im- 
portant distinctions  between  plays,  music,  and 
poetry  on  the  one  hand,  and  pictures  and  sculp- 


26  JOHN  WEBSTER 

ture  on  the  other,  is  that  the  element  of  duration 
enters  into  the  first  group.  There  is  no  especial 
point  in  a  picture  at  which  you  begin  or  end  look- 
ing at  it;  no  fixed  order  of  sensations.  There  is 
just  the  picture.  But  the  order  of  sensations 
which  a  play  should  arouse  in  you  is  fixed  be- 
forehand, and  essential.  This  fact  of  duration 
gives  theatrical  art  two  features.  It  can  arouse 
all  the  emotions  that  can  be  got  through  the  con- 
secution of  events;  and  it  can  employ  the  suc- 
cession of  emotions  in  the  mind.  Both  these 
are  important.  Take  the  latter  first.  It  is  obvi- 
ous that,  though  he  may  demand  certain  knowl- 
edge in  the  spectator  before  the  beginning  of  the 
play,  the  artist  cannot  demand  any  definite  state 
of  mind.  He  can  only  claim  to  be  presented  with 
an  expectant  and  fairly  blank  normal  mind. 
After  that  he  is  responsible.  And  at  any  moment 
during  the  play,  his  choice  of  the  emotions  to 
arouse  is  conditioned  by  the  emotions  already 
aroused.  Each  situation  must  be  planned,  each 
line  written,  with  regard  to  the  effect  of  what  has 
gone  before,  not  only  logically,  but  psychologic- 
ally, on  the  audience.  The  continuity  of  the  play 
must  be  an  emotional  continuity,  even  more  than 
a  rational  one:  not  necessarily,  of  course,  the 
same  emotion  continuously,  but  necessarily  har- 
monious ones,    I  do  not  mean  to  suggest  that  the 


THE  THEATRE  27 

spectator  of  a  play  experiences  a  number  of  defi- 
nite emotions,  one  at  a  time,  each  lasting  three 
seconds,  consecutive.  His  state  of  mind  is  com- 
plex; and  while  some  perceptions  or  emotions 
flash  with  infinite  swiftness  through  it,  others  last 
and  colour  the  contents  of  subsequent  states  of 
mind  for  some  time.  It  is  these  last  that  are 
most  important,  but  the  whole  mental  and  emo- 
tional experience  has  a  cumulative  effect.  It  is 
as  if  a  stream  of  water  of  various  heat  was  trick- 
ling through  a  basin.  The  heat  of  the  water  in 
the  basin  at  any  moment  would  be  affected  by 
the  heat  of  the  basin,  which  in  turn  would  be 
a  result  of  the  past  heats  of  all  the  water  that 
had  gone  through  before.  Only,  heat  is  simple, 
and  the  succession  of  emotions  and  sensations  is 
manifold  and  complex.  The  merit  and  kind  of 
the  play,  in  a  sense  the  play  itself,  lie  in  the  whole 
curve  of  these  states  of  mind.  That  is  the  most 
important  thing  about  plays,  to  which  every- 
thing, ultimately,  must  be  referred.  I  can  more 
easily  imagine  a  play  good  in  which  all  the  char- 
acters of  the  first  four  acts  vanished,  and  entirely 
new  ones  came  on  in  the  fifth,  with  an  entirely 
new  plot,  so  long  as  the  emotions  aroused  were 
harmonious,  than  one  in  which  the  successive 
states  of  mind  clashed. 

What   a  man  generally  refers   to   when  he 


28  JOHN  WEBSTER 

speaks  of  a  play,  and  of  the  goodness  and  quali- 
ties of  it,  is  a  memory  of  this  succession  of  states 
of  mind,  a  kind  of  foreshortened  view  of  it,  an 
emotional  precis  or  summary.  A  good  critic  is 
he  who  can  both  feel  a  play  perfectly  at  the  time, 
and  sum  up  its  particular  taste  and  intensity 
perfectly,  for  his  own  reference,  in  this  retro- 
spective summary.  The  process  of  summarising 
a  play  thus  involves  the  abstraction  of  various, 
more  or  less  common  elements  of  the  successive 
states  of  mind  the  play  produces,  and  the  con- 
cocting them  into  one  imagined  taste  or  state  of 
mind,  "the  play."  All  these  summaries  are  of 
something  the  same  kind;  so  the  habit  of  think- 
ing of  plays  thus  leads  men  to  think  that  there 
is  some  common  quality  in  all  of  them — at  least, 
in  all  serious  ones — "beauty"  and  a  common  "ses- 
thetic  emotion"  always  in  the  mind  of  all  spec- 
tators of  plays.  I  believe  that  honest  introspec- 
tion of  one's  states  of  mind  during  a  play,  will 
show  that  there  is  no  one  quality  one  can  call 
"beauty"  in  all  successful  serious  plays.  If  there 
is  any  meaning  at  all  in  the  word  "beauty,"  my 
emotion  at  lago's  temptation  of  Othello,  or 
Lear's  "Prithee,  undo  this  button,"  is  in  no  way 
a  consciousness  of  beauty;  and  though  there  is, 
perhaps,  something  in  my  state  of  mind — the 
shape  of  it,  so  to  speak — which  is  the  same  when 


THE  THEATRE  29 

I  watch  any  tragedy,  it  is  only  due,  I  think,  to 
the  fact  that  all  tragedies  I  know  have  a  certain 
common  quality  of  being  partly  like  life;  I  do 
not  find  this  something  in  my  mind  when  I  am 
watching  pure  dancing. 

A  play  is  good  in  proportion  as  the  states  of 
mind  during  the  witnessing  of  it  are,  in  sum, 
good.  The  good  of  these  states  of  mind  is,  in 
practice,  very  much  dependent  on  the  pleasur- 
ableness  of  them,  and  proportionate  to  it.  Much 
more  so  than  in  real  life,  where  the  consciousness 
of  virtue  makes  some  unpleasant  states  good. 
But  pleasure  is  not  a  perfect  criterion  of  good, 
even  in  the  theatre.  For  a  performance  that  pro- 
vokes lust  would  move  pleasant  states  of  mind, 
but  not  good  ones. 

If  this  is  granted,  the  difficulty  is:  in  whom 
is  a  play  to  move  good  states  of  mind,  in  order 
to  be  called  good?  Obviously,  not  only  in  me. 
A  play  in  Russian  might  be  very  good,  and  yet 
only  bore  me,  because  I  couldn't  understand  it. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  do  not  think  it  fair  to  call 
a  play  good  which  can  be  understood  by  nobody 
but  the  author.  Everybody  is  familiar,  in  the 
realm  of  literature,  with  the  writer  who  is  im- 
mensely pleased  with  his  own  poem  because  of 
the  emotions  it  evokes  in  him.  The  phrase  "the 
sun  is  setting"  recalls  to  him  the  purple  and 


30  JOHN  WEBSTER 

green  glory  that  moved  him  to  this  inadequate 
expression.  But  it  will  not  affect  anyone  else  in 
the  same  way,  so  we  rightly  refuse  to  call  the 
poem  good.  Obscurity  in  an  author  is,  ulti- 
mately, a  fault.  A  family  of  my  acquaintance 
uses  a  private  and  peculiar  synonjTn  of  their 
own  childish  invention  for  "hand,"  the  word 
"nopen."  ^  If  one  of  them  wrote  a  poem  con- 
taining this  word,  it  would  affect  him  very  much, 
because  of  the  aura  of  associations  around  it. 
But  the  rest  of  the  world  would  find  it  mean- 
ingless. It  would  not  be  a  good  poem.  One  is 
reduced  to  saying  that  a  good  play  means  a  play 
that  would  be  likely  to  stir  good  states  of  mind 
in  an  intelligent  man  of  the  same  nation,  class, 
and  century  as  the  author.  It  follows  that  a 
good  Elizabethan  play  is  a  play  that  would  have 
been  good  in  Elizabethan  times;  and  not  a  play 
that  is  good  to  us,  with  our  different  ideas.  The 
two  categories  coincide  to  a  great  extent.  But 
their  differences  are  important. 

And  it  follows  that  all  those  literary  qualities 
that  answer  to  patine  in  works  of  art — quaint- 
ness,  old-fashionedness,  interest  as  illustrating  a 
bygone  age — are  irrelevant.  I  had  rather  read 
an  interesting  book  originally  worthless,  than  a 
fine  poem  in  a  language  I  cannot  understand. 

*  Because  it  opens. 


THE  THEATRE  31 

But  it  would  be  misleading  to  call  the  former  a 
better  book. 

Whether  the  states  of  mind  produced  by  a 
play  were  good  or  not,  must  be  decided  by  intro- 
spection. The  object  of  most  critical  enquiries 
is  to  discover  what  sort  of  effect  different  things 
in  the  theatre  have  on  these  states  of  mind.  It 
is  obvious  if  one  examines  one's  consciousness 
during  a  play,  that  several  different  classes  of 
object  fill  and  move  it.  There  is  sound.  Music, 
or  the  mere  melody  of  words,  impresses  and 
pleases.  There  is  the  further  literary  pleasure  of 
the  language,  apart  from  the  mere  sense;  and 
sometimes  there  is  metre.  There  is  movement, 
varying  from  absolute  dancing  to  mere  imitation 
of  life.  There  is,  in  most  theatrical  perform- 
ances, the  story.  And  there  is  the  realism  of  the 
piece ;  i.e.  its  value  as  impressing  us  with  the  sense 
of  its  reality. 

If  we  exclude  pure  dancing,  all  performances 
in  theatres  have  some  value  as  connected  with 
reality.  To  discover  what  it  is,  one  has  to  con- 
sider one  of  the  widest  and  most  important  psy- 
chological questions  connected  with  the  theatre, 
the  question  of  convention. 

To  say  that  one  feels  the  reality  of  an  ordinary 
play  without  believing  it,  is  a  fairly  accurate  de- 
scription of  one's  attitude.     It  would  be  better 


32  JOHN  WEBSTER 

to  put  it  in  this  way:  the  feeling  of  reality,  the 
emotion  of  conviction,  of  faith,  is  a  purely  psy- 
chological one.  It  is  this  that  plays  aim  at  pro- 
ducing. It  is  not  the  same  emotion  we  have  in 
real  life.  In  real  life  one  does  not  feel  "He  is 
really  there,  talking  to  me!"  One  takes  it  for 
granted.  He  is  there.  This  is  also  present  to 
some  degree  when  one  is  witnessing  a  play,  but 
it  is  the  negative  and  less  valuable  side  of  the 
emotion.  The  former,  the  positive  feeling  of 
reality,  does  not  tend  to  result  in  action.  The 
latter  does  permit  of  various  emotions  resulting 
in  action.  So  there  has  to  be  a  permanent  inhi- 
bition of  such  action ;  or,  to  put  it  in  another  way, 
you  accept  the  convention  of  the  actors,  the 
absent  fourth  wall  (on  the  modern  stage),  and 
so  on.  It  was  in  the  want  of  this  inhibition  that 
the  wrongness  of  that  Italian's  attitude  lay,  who, 
at  a  performance  of  Hamlet^  was  so  wrought 
upon  that  he  rose  from  his  place  in  the  pit,  and 
shot  Claudius.  Many  find  it  difficult  to  under- 
stand the  attitude  of  the  human  mind  about  such 
convention.  They  either  say,  "Absence  of  scen- 
ery destroys  the  illusion,"  or  "You  must  know 
it  isn't  true."  The  accepting  of  a  convention 
means  that  one  says,  "Suppose  Romans  talked 

English  blank  verse,  then "  and  gives  oneself 

to  the  play;  or,  to  put  it  another  way,  one  puts 


THE  THEATRE  33 

a  lid  on  one's  knowledge  that  Romans  didn't  talk 
English  blank  verse.  Ignorant  of  that,  one  can 
believe  the  rest. 

This  is  one  of  the  most  natural  and  deep- 
rooted  instincts  in  men.  We  do  not  want  illu- 
sion; we  only  ask  that  conventions  should  be 
made  and  kept.  But  it  is  important  that  they 
should  be  kept.  The  artist  can  make  any  amount 
of  conventions;  but,  once  made,  he  must  not 
break  them.  It  is  obvious  in  children.  A  grown- 
up can  say,  "Suppose  you  are  a  hen,  and  she  is 
a  steam-roller,  and  I  am  the  King  of  Portugal," 
and  they  will  carry  the  play  out  with  entire  ac- 
ceptance of  this,  absolute  appreciation  of  the 
drama  ensuing.  But  if  the  grown-up  breaks 
from  his  regal  speech  and  behaviour  a  moment 
to  address  a  remark,  in  his  own  person,  to  some 
outsider  or  to  the  steam-roller  in  its  private  exist- 
ence, the  grief  and  dismay  of  the  children  is 
prodigious  and  unexpected.  Observation  or 
memory  will  assure  one  that  their  pain  is  purely 
aesthetic.  It  is  what  we  feel  when  a  dramatist 
breaks  or  misuses  one  of  the  conventions. 

The  artist's  business,  then,  is  to  make  these 
various  conventions,  and,  within  them,  to  impress 
the  spectator  as  much  as  possible  with  the  sense 
of  reality.  There  are  many  ways  of  doing  this; 
realism  in  any  one  one  branch — in  the  chain  of 


34  JOHN  WEBSTER 

events,  in  the  gestures  of  the  actors,  in  the  style 
of  speech,  in  the  truth  to  life  of  the  characters, 
or  in  the  scenery — will  do  to  start  the  feehng  of 
reality,  and  it  will  then  gather  force  from  the 
general  power  of  the  play.  Or  there  are  unreal- 
istic ways  of  impressing  the  spectator  with  real- 
ity, through  mere  literary  or  theatrical  power. 
It  is  to  be  noticed  that  in  some  of  these  things, 
realism  means  breaking  a  convention  and  setting 
up  a  more  realistic  one,  and  is  consequently  com- 
parative. With  speech,  for  example,  realism 
means  more  realistic  speech  than  one  is  accus- 
tomed to.  Robertson's  Caste  was  realistic  in  this 
direction,  in  its  day.  When  we  had  got  used  to 
that,  Mr.  Shaw's  plays,  with  their  more  natural- 
istic speech,  appeared,  and  seemed  to  us  more 
realistic.  They,  in  their  turn,  ring  now  old- 
fashioned  by  the  side  of  more  modern  plays,  the 
dialogue  of  which  seems  to  us,  for  a  time,  start- 
lingly  and  triumphantly  like  real  life. 

If  one  keeps  in  mind  the  fact  that  the  ultimate 
classification  of  plays,  for  aesthetic  purposes, 
must  be  by  the  general  tone  of  the  states  of  mind 
they  evoke,  the  endeavour  to  distinguish  Trag- 
edy from  Comedy,  and  to  define  Tragedy,  by 
subject-matter,  appears  rather  misleading. 
Tragedy  may  have  to  have  a  "hero,"  it  may  in- 
volve death,  it  may  require  a  conflict.     All  we 


THE  THEATRE  35 

know  is  that,  in  the  two  or  three  varieties  of 
Tragedy  we  are  acquainted  with  that  have  hith- 
erto been  evolved,  these  things  are  generally 
present.  The  duty  of  critics  is  rather  to  decide 
how  far  it  is  probable  that  a  play  with  a  hero  will 
evoke  deeper  "Tragic"  feeling  than  a  play  with- 
out one,  and  such  half-technical  and  quantita- 
tive questions. 

The  emotions  of  a  spectator  are  produced  in 
various  ways,  and  through  the  two  channels  of 
the  eye  and  ear.  Performances  can  mix  their 
appeals  through  these  channels  in  any  propor- 
tion. Pantomime  can  appeal,  very  powerfully, 
through  the  eye  alone.  A  blind  man  could  get 
a  great  deal  of  enjoyment  out  of  some  plays. 
But  honest  introspection  will  convince  anyone 
that  a  very  large  part  of  the  appeal  made  by  a 
performance  of  the  kind  of  play  Hamlet  or  The 
Duchess  of  Malfi  is,  comes  through  the  eye. 
Would  one  rather  be  bhnd  or  deaf  at  such  a 
performance?  It  is  a  comprehensible  and  com- 
mon, but  dangerous  fault,  to  over-emphasise  the 
importance  of  the  printed  text  to  the  whole  play. 
It  is  true  that  the  romantic  halo  and  additions  of 
beauty  to  the  general  lines  of  the  play,  came,  in 
Elizabethan  plays,  very  little  in  the  things  you 
could  look  at;  almost  entirely  in  the  words.  But 
the  story  itself  was  told  visually  as  well  as  audi- 


36  JOHN  WEBSTER 

bly.  The  Elizabethans  were  above  all  men  of 
the  theatre,  and  planned  performances.  It  is 
important  always  to  keep  this  in  mind  when  read- 
ing their  "plays,"  always  to  be  trying  to  visualise 
the  whole  performance  from  the  text,  and  to 
judge  it  so,  and  always  to  look  with  suspicion  on 
those  who  judge  the  text  as  literature.  It  may 
be  good  literature,  sometimes ;  but  it  was  not  pri- 
marily that.  To  judge  The  Duchess  of  3Ialfi 
from  the  book  of  the  words  which  we  happen  to 
possess  is  a  little  like  judging  a  great  picture  by 
a  good  photograph  of  it.  The  general  plan  is 
given  you,  and  you  see  all  the  lines,  and  shapes, 
and  shading;  and  you  have  to  supply  the  colour 
by  an  effort  of  the  imagination.  Much  genuine 
aesthetic  pleasure  can  be  got  from  this;  but  no 
one  would  be  so  rash  as  to  assume  that,  after 
that,  he  knew  the  picture.  With  plays,  people 
are  more  presumptuous.  But  an  honest  man 
will  sadly  have  to  acknowledge  that,  in  the  text, 
we  have  only  the  material  for  a  rough,  partial, 
and  hesitating  appreciation  of  The  Duchess  of 
Malfi;  and  that  this  is  the  truer  because  it  is  an 
Elizabethan  play,  that  is  to  say,  it  is  written  in 
a  language  somewhat  different  from  ours,  and 
pronounced  differently  too,  and  it  was  per- 
formed in  conditions  we  do  not  completely  know 
and  cannot  at  all  realise.     It  was  composed  for 


THE  THEATRE  87 

an  audience  accustomed  to  the  platform  stage 
and  no  scenery;  which  we  can  never  be.  It  was 
composed  for  the  stage,  and  we  judge  it  as  liter- 
ature ;  we  are  only  readers.  It  is  right  enough  to 
attempt  to  realise  imaginatively  Elizabethan 
plays  as  plays.  It  is  right  enough  to  admire 
their  great  literary  merits  and  their  rather  acci- 
dental power  as  study-drama.  But,  after  all, 
we  have  only  the  text — and  that  a  not  always 
trustworthy  one — one  factor  of  several  in  the 
play,  a  residue,  fragments  of  the  whole.  We  are 
like  men  who  possess  sweet-smelling  shards  of 
a  jar  which  once  held  perfumes,  and  know  how 
fragrant  it  must  have  been;  but  the  jar  is  broken, 
and  the  perfumes  lost. 


Chapter  II 

THE  ORIGINS  OF  ELIZABETHAN 
DRAMA 

It  needs  the  imaginative  sympathy  of  a  good 
anthropologist  to  understand  the  real  nature  of 
the  various  progenitors  of  the  Elizabethan 
drama;  and  it  needs  the  intuition  of  a  good  psy- 
chologist to  interpret  it.  Luckily  much  of  the 
outer  history,  names,  dates,  and  facts,  together 
with  a  good  deal  of  understanding  explanation, 
has  been  given  us  by  such  writers  as  Professor 
Creizenach,  and,  above  all,  by  Mr.  Chambers. 
Subsequent  works,  such  as  The  Cambridge  His- 
tory of  English  Literature,  merely  follow  on 
his  lines,  sometimes  slightly  varying  relative  im- 
portances, nothing  more.  But  as  one  reads  the 
array  of  facts  and  the  brilliantly  powerful  gen- 
eralisations and  inductions  of  JNIr.  Chambers,  or 
the  patient  condensations  of  his  successors,  it  is 
impossible  not  to  feel  the  full  sea  of  scepticism. 
Where  we  have  records,  do  we  really  understand  ? 
It  is  hard  enough,  four-fifths  of  the  books  now 
written  on  them  witness,  not  to  be  wholly  out  of 

38 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  39 

touch  with  the  Elizabethans   themselves.     But 
they  are  our  brothers  and  fathers.    These  others, 
these  white-faced  savages  who  seem  to  beckon 
and  move  in  the  fog  of  the  Middle  Ages  or  the 
deeper  night  behind — what  have  they  to  do  with 
us?    A  surface  likeness  of  name  and  tongue  will 
not  hide  their  foreignness.    Their  hearts  are  dif- 
ferent, and  distant  from  ours.    They  live  in  an- 
other universe.      The   unconscious   worshippers 
of  a  vegetation-god,  the  audience  of  a  scoj),  the 
spectators  of  a  miracle-play — what  was  really  in 
their  minds?     We  triumphantly  know  that  the 
Feast  of  Fools  was  celebrated  at  Tournai  on  the 
eve  of  Holy  Innocents,  1498,  that  an  interlude 
was  given  at  King's  Lynn  on  Corpus  Christi 
1385,  that  the  processional  religious  drama  was 
acted  on  "pageants,"  and  so  forth.     But  what 
were  the  people  thinking,  as  the  waggons  rolled 
by  or  the  actors  came  out?    How  like  was  it  to 
an    Elizabethan's    feeling    as    he   watched    The 
Tragedy  of  Byron?  or  to  ours  when  we  see  The 
Importance  of  Being  Earnest?    It  is  absurd  to 
pretend  we  know. 

Such  are  the  misgivings  with  which  the  honest 
student  looks  back  on  "the  origins  of  the 
drama."  He  can  pretend  he  sees  how  the  "plat- 
form-stage" arose,  and  passed  into  the  "picture- 
stage";  he  can  cheat  himself  into  believing  he 


40  JOHN  WEBSTER 

has  established  the  generations  of  an  Enghsh 
dramatic  form;  but  what,  in  our  time  and  race, 
is  the  history  of  those  comphcated  states  of  mind 
the  witnessing  of  Hamlet  breeds  in  us — that  he 
dare  only  wonder. 

If  he  looks  beyond  the  Middle  Ages  he  finds 
at  first  more  familiar  things.  Seneca's  plays  fall 
recognisable  on  his  modern  hearing ;  and  if  those 
were  never  on  the  stage,  other  tragedies  and 
farces  which  we  could,  it  is  imaginable,  under- 
stand, if  not  applaud,  held  the  Roman  ear.  And 
the  modern  eye  greets  even  more  gladly  finer, 
less  recorded,  performances.  The  best  taste  in 
Rome  loved  the  intricate  exquisite  tragedies  of 
the  x^^p^^o<f>oi,  the  dancers.  We  glibly  call 
them,  allow  literary  people  to  call  them,  the 
decadent  successors  of  the  drama.  They  may, 
we  can  believe  now,  have  awoken  passionate 
ecstasies  of  emotion,  beyond  our  dreams;  but 
they  could  not  be  handed  down.  These  "choreo- 
drames"  have  perished.  So  we  comfortably  fall 
in  with  the  assumption  of  those  who  practise 
literature,  that  drama,  that  queer  and  monstrous 
birth,  is  the  God  of  the  theatre.  Literary  people 
are  very  kind  to  each  other;  and  all-powerful 
over  civilisation.  Through  them  come  our  his- 
tory, facts,  ideas,  and  arguments;  and  so  our 
valuations.      We   see   all   things   through   their 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  41 

mists.  The  feet  of  the  dancers  throb  "No !",  their 
heads  jerk  argument  and  dialectic  to  us;  we  do 
not  heed.  We  have  read  of  Talfourd,  and  he  will 
outlive  Taglioni.  The  other  arts  present  them- 
selves naked,  to  be  accepted  as  they  are.  Only 
literature  continually  weaves  laurels,  and  is  for 
ever  crowning  herself. 

But  the  arts  had  always  an  enemy,  especially 
the  arts  of  the  theatre.  The  plays  we  know  of 
and  the  dancing  we  ignore  were  equally  threat- 
ened by  religion,  who  brought  with  her  the  blind 
forces  of  asceticism  and  morality.  Any  emo- 
tional and  absorbing  view  of  the  universe  that 
throws  the  value  of  life  over  into  the  next  world, 
naturally  regards  things  of  this  world  as  means 
rather  than  ends.  And  so  it  always  tends  to  com- 
bine with  and  use  that  deep  instinct  in  human 
nature,  the  instinct  to  treat  all  things  as  means, 
which  is  called  Puritanism.  For  eighteen  hun- 
dred years,  religion,  when  it  has  been  strong 
enough,  has  persecuted  or  starved  the  arts.  At 
times,  when  it  has  grown  shallow,  it  has  allowed 
a  thin  subservient  art  to  flourish  beneath  it;  an 
art  that,  ostensibly  educating  men  to  be  in  some 
way  useful,  for  this  life  or  the  next,  couldn't  help 
treating  them,  for  a  stolen  moment,  as  ends. 
Such,  perhaps,  was  the  pictorial  art  of  the  Mid- 
dle Ages  in  Italy.    But  in  general  the  arts  have 


42  JOHN  WEBSTER 

been  kept  pretty  well  under,  especially  the  arts 
of  the  theatre,  creeping  slowly  out  when  religion 
has  slept,  as  in  the  eighteenth  century,  or  some- 
times liberated  by  such  splendid  bursts  of  irre- 
ligion  as  produced  the  Elizabethan  drama  in 
England. 

The  early  fathers  of  the  Church  embodied  the 
spirit  of  religion,  knew  the  Will  of  God,  as 
clearly  in  this  as  in  most  matters.  It  is  amusing 
to  see  that  Arius  alone  went  so  far  as  pleading 
for  even  a  Christian  theatre.  Here,  too,  he  was 
a  lonely  light.  All  the  orthodox  makers  of  Chris- 
tianity were  venomous  against  spectacula.  Like 
children  saving  up  for  one  great  treat.  Chris- 
tians were  consoled  by  Tertullian  for  the  loss  of 
theatres  in  this  world,  by  the  promise  of  the 
future  spectacle  of  the  exquisite  and  eternal  suf- 
fering or  richly  comic  writhing  of  play-actors 
and  dramatists.  The  forces  of  evil  triumphed. 
And  the  theatre  was  lost  more  swiftly  and  com- 
pletely than  the  rest  of  civilisation,  when  the 
double  night  of  barbarism  and  Christianity  set- 
tled down  over  Europe. 

The  long,  long  rebirth  of  the  Theatre  was  a 
process  of  roughly  the  same  kind  in  nearly  all 
European  countries.  But  at  present  I  am  chiefly 
concerned  with  England.  For  this  country  the 
forces  that  led  to  the  reappearance  of  theatrical 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  4S 

art  and  the  drama  are  generally  divided  into  four 
groups.  There  were  the  various  travelling  min- 
strels and  entertainers;  the  folk- festivals  and 
folk-plays;  the  religious  drama;  and  the  influ- 
ence of  the  classics.  The  relative  importance  of 
some  of  the  earlier  fountains  of  the  English 
drama  has  been  mistaken,  through  false  psychol- 
ogy. Great  weight  is  always  laid  on  the  various 
popular  festivals  and  games,  and  the  unconscious 
relics  of  old  religions.  They  are  said  to  be  ex- 
amples of  the  beginning  of  mimetic  art.  If  peo- 
ple find  a  participant  in  a  May-festival  taking 
the  name  of  "The  Queen,"  or  a  member  of  a 
dance  assuming  a  personality  with  the  name  of 
"Ginger-breeches,"  they  stretch  delighted  fin- 
gers, crying,  "The  origins  of  drama!"  It  is  an 
error.  It  is  not  true  that  "the  practice  which 
lies  at  the  root  of  dramatic  art  and  of  the  pleas- 
ure to  be  gained  from  it"  is  "that  of  pretending 
to  be  someone  or  something  else."  ^  That  is 
merely  what  lies  at  the  root  of  being  an  actor; 
and  only  one  of  the  things  even  there,  as  anyone 
who  has  known  amateur  actors  can  testify.  As 
such,  it  is  but  one  of  the  human  instincts  which, 
as  it  happens,  enable  us  to  satisfy  our  love  for 
seeing  drama.  It  has  no  more  to  do  with  "the 
pleasure  to  be  gained  from  dramatic  art"  than 

*  C.  H.  E.  L.,  vol.  v.,  p.  28. 


44  JOHN  WEBSTER 

the  desire  for  fame  which  made  Keats  write,  or 
the  desire  for  expression  which  made  Wagner 
compose,  have  to  do  with  poetry  or  music.  They 
are  conditions;  at  the  most,  indispensable  condi- 
tions. The  point  of  an  art  is  in  the  state  of  mind 
of  the  recipient. 

"The  poet  sings  because  he  must; 
We  read  because  we  will." 

Certain  pleasant  and  valuable  states  of  our  minds 
when  we  see  it,  are  what  distinguishes  dramatic 
art.  Only  such  causes  as  produced  them,  or 
earlier  forms  of  them,  are  directly  relevant  to  a 
history  of  the  drama  or  the  theatre.  Folk-games 
and  festivals,  and  even  folk-drama,  have,  there- 
fore, it  seems  to  me,  nearly  no  relevance  to  the 
history  of  the  English  drama. 

What  is  much  more  important  is,  of  course, 
the  religious  drama.  Religion,  incessantly  and 
half-consciously  hostile  to  the  arts,  has  inces- 
santly and  half-consciously  fostered  them. 
Every  activity  of  the  mind  of  man  is  both  end 
and  means;  and  it  is  as  impossible  for  religion 
to  confine  art  to  be  useful,  as  it  is  for  the  pure 
"hedonist"  to  make  it  merely  an  end.  When  the 
first  moralist  discovered  that  by  putting  his  ad- 
vice into  a  rhymed  couplet  he  interested  and  im- 
pressed the  people  more,  he  opened  the  flood- 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  45 

gates.  There  soon  came  along  somebody  who 
thought  more  of  the  jingle  than  of  the  morality. 
The  moralist  was  powerless  to  prevent  him. 
Thence  follow  Martial,  Villon,  English  folk- 
songs, the  Earl  of  Rochester's  play,  Baudelaire, 
and  all  the  abominations  of  the  holy.  As  the 
earliest  Christian  artist  sought,  in  illustrating 
some  incident  from  Christ's  life,  to  enrich  Truth 
with  Beauty,  the  ghostly,  unborn  fingers  of  the 
Breughels  and  Felicien  Rops  guided  his  brush. 

So  while  Christianity  was  busily  disinfecting  ""7 
the  front  hall,  the  most  dreadful  smells  were  j 
starting  again  in  the  scullery.  As  early  as  the  i 
fourth  century,  before  she  was  yet  able  to  tri- 
umph completely  in  the  defeat  of  the  pagan 
theatre,  the  Church  had  begun  to  show  forth  part 
of  the  greatest  drama  in  her  universe,  by  repre- 
sentation, and  with  all  the  pomp  and  wonder  of 
the  highest  dramatic  art.  Those  who  admit  the 
existence  of  other  varieties  of  theatrical  art  be- 
sides the  entirely  realistic,  must  recognise  that 
the  state  of  mind  of  the  spectator  of  the  INIass  is 
strongly  aesthetic.  Other  elements  enter,  but  they 
combine,  not  clash,  wdth  this.  The  fact  the  spec- 
tator thinks  that  what  is  being  represented  is 
true  does  not  make  the  whole  thing  undramatic. 
It  becomes  a  variety  of  drama,  as  portrait-paint- 
ing is  a  variety  of  pictorial  art,  but  with  less  dis- 


46  JOHN  WEBSTER 

cordant  ends  than  the  portraitist  must  try  to 
serve.  That  the  importance  of  the  Mass  is  quite 
other  than  aesthetic  is  irrelevant.  Considered  in 
the  hght  of  the  states  of  mind  of  the  spectators 
of  that  time,  the  Mass  must  have  been  great 
drama  as  surely  as  Giotto's  pictures  of  the  life 
of  Christ  were  great  pictorial  art. 

Other  services  and  ceremonies  of  the  Church 
followed  in  admitting  more  or  less  of  drama. 
The  history  of  them,  the  Quem  quceritis  trope  and 
the  rest,  had  been  worked  out  and  often  related. 
The  progress  from  few  to  many  occasions  for 
gratifying  the  theatrical  instinct  in  men  was  in- 
evitable. More  elaborate  as  well  as  more  numer- 
ous, as  the  centuries  went  on,  grew  the  liturgical 
dramas.  They  soon  began  to  be  transported  out- 
side the  churches;  finally  to  be  played  by  lay- 
men. More  and  more  scenes  from  the  Bible  and 
from  legend  were  dramatised  and  performed. 
They  became  definitely  amusing  and  interesting 
for  the  people,  quite  apart  from  the  lessons 
they  might  teach.  Rather  too  much  stress  has 
been  laid,  naturally,  on  the  great  cycles,  of  Ches- 
ter, York,  Coventry,  and  elsewhere,  that  have 
survived.  The  accident  of  their  existence  must 
not  make  us  forget  that,  in  church  and  out,  espe- 
cially l  out,  there  were  innumerable  miracle  and 
mystery  plays  continually  being  played  through 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  47 

England  in  the  two  or  three  hundred  years  be- 
fore Elizabeth.  Every  little  town  and  village 
seems  to  have  had  them.  They  were  the  ordinary 
food  of  the  theatrical  instincts  of  the  people.  We 
cannot  understand  them  now — what  there  is  left. 
They  are  far  from  our  ideas  of  drama,  and  by 
our  standards  they  fail.  We  can  see  that  some 
of  the  episodes  were  funny,  that  others  had 
pathetic  or  tragic  value,  or  a  queer  vitality  of 
characterisation.  But  the  whole  seems  incoher- 
ent, disjointed,  and  "inartistic."  Careful  writers 
go  through  them,  picking  out  bits  of  "realistic 
humour"  in  one  place,  and  "true  literary  feeling" 
in  another.  It  is  meaningless;  a  prattling  rela- 
tion of  which  parts  of  these  plays  appeal  to  a 
twentieth  century  professor.  What  did  those 
curious  mediasvals  feel  when  they  were  watching 
them?  We  cannot  tell.  They  may  have  had  as 
profound  and  passionate  emotions  as  a  play  of 
Ibsen's  stirs  in  us.  But  as  we  do  not  know  we 
cannot  affirm  that  this  mediaeval  drama  was  good 
or  bad;  any  more  than  we  can  for  the  Greek 
drama.  Which  of  the  two,  for  instance,  was  the 
greater?  It  is  like  a  deaf  mute  having  to  judge 
whether  Strauss  or  Mozart  is  the  greater  opera- 
maker.  Judging  from  the  librettos,  and  from 
watching  conductors,  he  might  guess  that  Strauss 
was  more  interesting,  Mozart  more  melodious. 


48  JOHN  WEBSTER 

.  .  .  He  could  play  with  inferences.  ...  So 
(whatever  may  be  claimed  by  Greek  scholars) 
must  we  confess  almost  complete  ignorance  about 
the  medieval  drama.  Some  things  can  be  said. 
It  was  certainly  narrow;  and  it  cannot  have  had 
those  qualities  of  concentration  and  "dramatic 
unity,"  that  are  necessary  for  great  dramatic  art 
as  we  are  used  to  know  it.  But  I  think  there 
may  have  been,  to  the  contemporary,  more  con- 
nection and  significance  in  many  of  these  series 
of  plays  than  the  modern  will  allow.  Or  rather, 
the  modern  sometimes  will  admit  it  intellectually, 
but  he  does  not  realise  it  emotionally.  I  can 
conceive  the  mediaeval  mind  (the  exceptional 
mediaeval  mind,  I  admit,  for  the  ordinary  childish 
one  must  have  viewed  scene  after  scene  with  that 
transient  delight,  on  a  background  of  reverence, 
with  which  schoolboys  read  Henry  the  Fourth — 
they  find  bits  very  interesting,  and  they  know  it's 
all  for  their  education)  tasting  in  each  episode 
both  the  episode  itself  and  the  whole,  in  such  a 
way  that,  finally,  that  whole  loomed  out  pecu- 
liarly solid,  majestic,  and  impressive.  The  mind 
would,  from  its  ordinary  bent  of  religious  and 
moral  thought,  be  prepared  to  receive  the  play 
(or  cycle)  in  just  this  way;  and  the  whole  thing 
would  fall  into  these  predestined  mental  channels 
with   immense  accumulating   force  and  power. 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  49 

Just  as  the  Agamemnon  was  meant  for,  had  its 
significance  for,  a  mind  naturally  thinking  in 
terms  of  v(3pL<s  and  art];  so,  perhaps,  a  mediaeval 
series  of  plays  could  only  find  their  value  in  a 
mind  thinking  naturally  and  immediately  in 
terms  of  the  whole  Bihlical  story,  theologically 
interpreted.  To  the  Greek  mind  the  rugs  laid 
down  for  Agamemnon  trailed  clouds  of  horror; 
to  the  mediaeval  the  incident  of  Cain  and  Abel 
may  have  suggested  straightly  and  sincerely,  in 
a  way  we  could  never  feel  it,  the  entire  ancestry 
of  Christ,  or  the  meaning  of  a  later  greater  sacri- 
fice, and  may  have  illuminated  and  caught  light 
from  the  whole  tremendous  process  of  the  work- 
ing out  of  the  Will  of  God.  I  do  not  know  if 
the  mediaeval  cycles  consciously  tried  to  produce 
an  effect  of  this  kind,  or  if  they  ever  succeeded, 
enough  to  make  them  worthy,  in  their  narrow 
kind,  to  stand  by  the  great  dramatic  products  of 
other  styles  and  other  ages.  I  only  suggest  that, 
aesthetically,  they  may  have  been  of  this  nature. 
It  is  a  method,  this  subordinating  the  parts  to  the 
whole,  in  such  a  way  that  the  parts  have  no  neces- 
sary connection  with  each  other  except  through 
the  whole,  that  is  strange  to  us  who  are  used  to 
"plots"  that  centre  about  one  incident  or  situa- 
tion, or  one  or  two  characters.  In  it  Time  or  Fate 
is  the  protagonist.    It  might  have,  but  never  did. 


50  JOHN  WEBSTER 

come  off  in  those  dreary  chronicle-plays,  that 
increase  the  desolation  of  the  early  Elizabethan 
drama.  It  is  a  method  that  has  been  used  in 
later  days  with  greater  success.  Wagner  in  The 
jRing  gets  something  of  this  effect.  And  Hardy 
in  TJie  Dy7iasts  and  Schnitzler  in  Der  Junge 
Medardus  have  used  these  apparently  discon- 
nected, episodic  scenes,  with  or  without  commen- 
tary, for  a  resultant  whole  as  different  from 
them  as  a  face  is  from  its  parts,  nose,  eyebrows, 
ears  and  the  rest.  They  show  you  a  street-scene, 
some  friends,  two  lovers — all  irrelevant — and 
you  know  Vienna  of  1809.  Or  they  pick  out, 
perhaps,  and  light  up,  a  few  disconnected  objects 
on  the  stream  of  time,  and  you  are  suddenly,  ter- 
ribly aware  of  the  immense  black  unreturning 
flood,  sliding  irrevocably  between  darknesses. 

Such  a  method,  however,  if  it  existed  in 
mediaeval  times,  did  not  influence  the  Elizabethan 
drama.  The  disconnected  narrative  form  was  in- 
deed an  Elizabethan  inheritance  from  mediaeval 
religious  drama;  but  merely  as  narrative.  The 
narrative  was  transferred  from  sacred  subjects 
to  historical;  the  line  is  pretty  clear.  The  chron- 
icle-plays, indeed,  appear  to  be  artistically  a 
retrogression.  In  incidents  and  in  the  whole 
they  are  more  pointless.  The  loose  narrative 
style,  the  limber  and  many- jointed  acts,  and  the 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  51 

habit  of  bringing  everything  on  the  stage,  lasted 
in  the  plays  of  the  great  period — the  beginning 
of  the  seventeenth  century.  Besides  this,  the  mir- 
acle and  mystery  plays  gave  little  to  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama.  They  handed  on  the  possibility 
of  tragedy  and  comedy;  but  that  gift  was  not 
needed.  They  bequeathed,  too,  a  certain  rather 
admirable  laxity  and  vagueness  with  regard  to 
locality  in  drama;  and  a  tiresome,  confusing 
tendency  to  make  plays  illustrate  a  moral,  a  ten- 
dency which  fitted  in  only  too  well  with  the 
theory  of  Elizabethan  times;  less,  fortunately, 
with  its  practice. 

These  miracles  and  mysteries  in  their  various 
forms  lasted,  in  country  parts  at  least,  to  over- 
lap with  the  Elizabethan  drama.  But  there  was 
another  form  of  the  religious  play  which  actually 
formed  the  chief  link  with  the  later  style,  the 
morality.  It  was  a  late  growth,  and  it  rather 
superseded  the  miracles  and  mysteries.  It  was 
aided,  though  not  originated,  by  the  revival  of 
learning  and  moral  fei^our  that  followed  the 
Renascence  and  accompanied  the  Reformation; 
and,  coming  at  this  time,  it  soon  widened  from 
merely  religious  ideas  to  all  kinds  of  secular  in- 
tellectual notions.  It  is  distinctly  of  the  age 
of  Protestantism,  and  so  we  can  understand  it, 
better  at  least  than  its  predecessors,  in  the  same 


52  JOHN  WEBSTER 

way  that  we  can  understand  Erasmus.  It  deals 
less  with  God  and  more  with  man  and  the  ab- 
stractions that  were  thought  to  surround  his  life. 
By  such  strange  ways  the  arts  came  home. 
JNIoralities  and  moral  interludes,  in  their  turn, 
could  have  produced  ( and  did  produce  in  Every- 
man at  least)  great  drama  in  their  kind.  But 
again,  it  was  a  narrow  kind.  Had  that  tide 
flowed  on  unchecked,  we  might  now  look  back 
on  an  immense  English  Drama  of  types  and 
personifications,  a  noble  utterance,  in  this  nar- 
row sort,  of  all  the  human  desires  and  dreams 
and  interpretations  of  life  for  centuries.  The 
crown  and  glory  of  the  English  theatre  would 
have  been  Milton — Comus,  even  now,  is,  in  dis- 
guise, the  most  noble  example  of  morality.  We 
might  have  achieved  the  most  solemn  and  noble 
drama  of  the  world — a  nobility  astonishingly  dif- 
ferent from  the  glory  we  have  achieved,  its  direct 
opposite.  For  the  transformation  of  the  moral- 
ity into  the  Elizabethan  play  was  a  complete  re- 
versal of  direction.  The  whole  point  of  the 
former  is  that  it  deals  with  the  general;  you 
find  all  your  experience  drawn  together  and  illu- 
minated; you  are  pervaded,  rather  than  shaken, 
with  the  emotion  of  the  philosopher  who  sees  the 
type  through  the  individual.  Love  beneath  the 
lover.    The  latter  gives  you  the  particular;  some 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  53 

definite  person  or  circumstance  so  poignantly 
that  you  feel  it;  the  reality  for  those  vaporous 
abstractions,  not  Love  but  William  in  love,  not 
Death  but  some  fool,  rather  untidily,  dying.  The 
one  shows  you  Everyman,  the  other  Hamlet. 
Each  way  is  good;  but  to  go  from  one  to  the 
other,  is  as  if  English  art  twenty-five  years  ago 
had  suddenly  swung  from  Watts  to  Whistler. 

Those  who  are  fond  of  comparing  epochs  in 
history  with  stages  in  the  life  of  a  man  will  be 
pleased  to  liken  the  medieval  miracles  and  mys- 
teries to  the  narratives  that  delight  children,  the 
period  of  the  moralities  to  that  invariable  love 
of  youth  for  generalities  and  proverbial  wisdom 
— for  Love,  Death,  Fate,  Youth,  and  all  the 
wonderful  heart-lifting  abstractions — and  in  the 
Elizabethan's  climb  to  that  chief  abode  of  art, 
the  heart  of  the  individual,  they  will  find  the 
middle-aged  turning,  with  the  strength  as  well 
as  the  bitterness  of  agnosticism,  to  all  that  on^^ 
can  be  certain  of,  or,  after  a  bit,  interested  in,  / 
men,  women,  places,  each  as  a  "special  case.' 
But  if  the  moralities  are  taken  on  their  own 
merits  and  not  as  a  step  in  a  process,  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  they  are,  artistically,  an  advance  on 
miracles  and  mysteries.  Dodsley's  point,  that 
they  were  a  better  kind,  as  giving  the  author 
greater  freedom,  enabling  him  to  invent  his  plots, 


54  JOHN  WEBSTER 

has  been  often  repeated.  There  is  not  much  in 
it.  The  Greeks  and  most  of  the  Elizabethans  did 
not,  in  that  sense,  "invent"  their  plots.  In  the 
Christian  stories  and  legends  the  greatest  drama- 
tist could  have  found  enough  to  last  him  a  life- 
time. Any  old  story  does  for  the  framework  of 
a  play.  The  moralities,  in  fact,  in  putting  the 
dramatist  to  the  trouble  of  inventing  a  "plot," 
rather  tended  to  divert  his  attention  from  more 
important  things.  In  other  ways,  however,  they 
did  widen  the  ground  for  the  dramatist;  and  in 
making  plaj^s  more  wholes  and  less  narratives, 
and  insisting  on  dramatic  unity,  they  prepared 
very  efficiently  for  the  Elizabethan  kinds  of 
drama.  It  might,  indeed,  have  been  better  if  their 
legacy  of  dramatic  unity  had  been  more  strictly 
observed.  Their  other  characteristic,  of  thinking 
in  types  and  abstractions,  instead  of  individuals, 
had  a  longer  influence,  of  no  very  healthy  kind, 
than  is  at  first  obvious.  Dr.  Faustus  is  only 
Everyman,  or  at  least  Every-philosopher,  with 
a  name  and  a  university  degree.  And  there  was 
also  a  moralising  effect;  which  is  not  quite  the 
same  thing.  An  art  which  proceeds  by  personi- 
fications of  abstract  ideas  need  not  moralise, 
though  in  this  instance  it  nearly  always  did.  A 
modern  morality  in  which  the  characters  were 
Evolution,       The-Survival-of-the-Fittest       (his 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  55 

comic  servant),  Man,  and  the  various  Instincts, 
might  be  very  impressive  without  conveying  any 
moral  at  all.  The  Elizabethan  drama,  however, 
started  with  the  burden  of  this  idea  among 
others,  that  a  play  rather  ought  to  specify  a 
moral  generalisation.  It  took  some  time  to  shake 
it  off. 

The  third  more  or  less  dramatic  activity 
through  the  Middle  Ages  was  provided  by  the 
minstrels  and  strolling  entertainers  of  various 
kinds.  The  ancesters  of  these  were  on  the  one 
hand  the  actors  of  Rome,  the  mimi,  who,  when 
the  theatres  ceased,  took  to  wandering  about  and 
giving  entertainments,  and  on  the  other  the  more 
reputable  and  probably  less  dramatic  Teutonic 
scop.  These  minstrels  were  a  great  feature  of 
the  whole  medieval  period,  but  their  importance 
in  the  history  of  the  theatre  has  always  been 
under-estimated.  There  are  two  reasons,  I  think. 
One  is  that  their  performances  have  left  very  lit- 
tle record.  The  history  of  religious  drama  can 
be  traced  fairly  fully.  Minstrels  of  all  kinds 
may  have  been  giving  unceasing  dramatic  enter- 
tainments throughout  Europe  during  the  same 
centuries.  We  have  nothing  to  say  about  it. 
There  are  no  traces  to  investigate,  no  written 
text  of  the  performances  to  comment  on.  So,  as 
we  continually  hear  of  the  religious  perform- 


56  JOHN  WEBSTER 

ances  and  never  of  these  others,  we  insensibly 
grow  to  attach  great  importance  to  the  former 
and  to  omit  the  latter  altogether  in  our  view. 
The  second  reason  lies  in  the  error  in  psychology 
I  have  discussed.  It  is  supposed  that,  while  any 
band  of  rustics  dressing  up  is  relevant  to  the  his- 
tory of  drama,  no  entertainment  given  by  min- 
strels is,  unless  it  is  full-blown  realistic  acting. 
I  think  that  careful  consideration  of  the  imagined 
states  of  mind  of  a  mediaeval,  or  indeed  of  a 
modern,  audience,  will  show  that  the  theatrical 
emotion  begins  far  before  that.  Even  a  single 
minstrel  reciting  a  tragic  story  seems  to  me 
nearer  to  evoking  it  than  many  apparently  more 
"mimetic"  activities.  And  directly  he  introduces 
any  representation  or  imitation — as  reciters 
always  tend  to  do — drama  is,  in  embryo,  there. 
I  think  it  is  certain  that  a  single  performer  can 
produce  all  the  effects  of  drama,  by  represent- 
ing, conventionally,  several  characters  in  turn. 
Mile.  Yvette  Guilbert  does  it.  You  get  from 
her  the  illusion  of  seeing,  with  extraordinary 
insight  and  vividness,  first  the  prisoner  of 
Nantes,  and  then  the  gaoler's  daughter,  quite  as 
much  as  you  would  in  an  opera.  The  thing  can 
go  further.  I  myself  have  seen  a  mere  amateur 
represent  at  one  time  and  in  his  one  person  two 
lame  men,  each  lame  in  a  different  way,  walking 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  57 

arm-in-arm,  with  almost  complete  realism.    And 
when  it  comes  to  dialogues  and  estrifs  between 
two  or  more  performers,  it  seems  to  me  absurd 
pedantry,  a  judging  by  forms  instead  of  realitie^_ 
to  deny  the  presence  of  drama. 

In  any  case,  the  miifii  went  into  the  darkness, 
at  the  end  of  Rome,  performing  plays;  and  the 
same  class  reappears,  performing  plays,  as  soon 
as  we  can  discover  anything  about  them,  cen- 
turies later.  The  influence  of  the  farces  these 
wanderers  were  playing  towards  the  end  of  the 
middle  ages,  on  early  English  comedy,  is  more 
or  less  recognised.  I  think  it  is  very  probable 
they  had  a  great  influence  also  on  tragedy  and 
on  drama  as  a  whole.  Some  of  them,  it  is  known, 
used  to  perform  puppet-plays  wherever  they 
went.  The  importance  of  these  in  keeping  drama 
and  the  taste  for  tragedy  and  comedy  alive  in 
the  hearts  of  the  people  is  immense.  These 
strolling  professional  entertainers  took  their  part 
also  in  other  kinds  of  dramatic  performances. 
We  find  them  helping  in  folk-plays  and  festi- 
vals; and  when  the  religious  plays  were  secular- 
ised, they  often  appear  as  aiding  the  amateurs. 
Indeed,  the  "interlude,"  the  favourite  dramatic 
form  which  develops  out  of  the  secularised  relig- 
ious plays,  and  which  led  straight  to  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama  proper,  fell  largely  into  the  hands 


58  JOHN  WEBSTER 

of  the  "minstrels."  About  that  time  they  were 
reinforced,  and  rivalled,  by  the  various  local  com- 
panies of  actors  v^ho  began  touring  in  a  semi- 
professional  way.  They  were  also  strengthened 
during  the  fifteenth  and  sixteenth  centuries  by 
being  enrolled  in  the  service  of  various  great 
lords.  Under  both  popular  and  aristocratic  cir- 
cumstances these  professionals,  after  severe  com- 
petition with  amateurs  during  the  first  part  of 
the  sixteenth  century,  settled,  some  of  them,  into 
theatres,  and  became  the  actors  of  the  Eliza- 
bethan drama.  Their  importance  in  this  light  is 
obviously  very  great.  But  their  true  position  can 
be  guessed  by  inspecting  Mr.  Chambers'  appen- 
dices of  medieval  plays  and  Mr.  Tucker  Mur- 
ray's more  recent  researches.  It  was  they  that 
were  responsible  for  continual  dramatic  perform- 
ances of  every  kind  throughout  England.  How 
good  or  bad  these  were  vv^e  cannot  tell.  The 
forces  of  religion  opposed  them,  with  varying 
vigour  at  different  periods,  and  probably  suc- 
ceeded in  degrading  them  to  a  low  level.  But 
they  must  have  prepared  the  mind  of  the  people 
to  exj^ect  certain  things  in  tragedy  or  comedy; 
and  they  may  account  for  various  aspects  of 
Elizabethan  plays  that  neither  the  religious  nor 
the  classical  influence  explains. 

By  the  middle  of  the  sixteenth  century,  then, 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  59 

the  drama  was  in  an  inchoate  condition.  Inter- 
ludes of  all  kinds,  moral,  religious,  controversial, 
and  farcical,  were  being  played  by  all  sorts  of 
audiences,  besides  the  rough  beginnings  of  popu- 
lar tragedy  and  comedy,  and  many  survivals  of 
the  old  religious  plays.  In  the  sixties  the  real 
Elizabethan  drama  began;  and  one  of  the  chief 
influences  in  working  the  change  was  the  classical 
one.  It  came  from  above,  and  from  amateurs. 
It  was  started,  it  is  noteworthy,  by  people  with 
a  fixed,  conscious,  solemn,  artistic  aim.  They 
wanted  to  have  tragedies  in  the  real  classical  way ; 
so  they  imitated,  queerly  enough,  Seneca!  Eng- 
lish Hterature  has  always  been  built  on  a  rever- 
ent misunderstanding  of  the  classics.  Anyhow, 
anyone  is  good  enough  to  be  a  god.  The  worst 
art  has  always  been  great  enough  to  inspire  the 
best.  The  iron  laws  of  heredity  do  not  affect 
literature;  and  Seneca  may  father  Shakespeare 
as  Macpherson  fathered  the  Romantic  Move- 
ment. 

The  dates  of  the  Senecan  movement  in  Italy, 
France,  and  England  have  been  elaborately 
worked  out.  They  do  not  concern  us  now.  The 
influence  of  Seneca,  and,  vaguely,  what  was 
thought  to  be  the  classical  tradition,  in  accord- 
ance with  the  misunderstood  laws  of  Aristotle, 
came  primarily  by  two  streams,  through  Italy 


60  JOHN  WEBSTER 

and  France.  Tancred  and  Gismunda  was  influ- 
enced by  the  Italian  Senecans;  Kyd  translated 
Gamier.  Italy,  of  course,  the  romantic  home 
of  all  beauty  and  art,  had  the  most  influence.  But 
culture  came  from  France.  The  English  began 
translating  Seneca  for  themselves  in  the  sixties 
and  seventies.  As  far  as  can  be  seen,  the  posi- 
tion in  the  eighties,  when  Marlowe  and  Kyd  were 
about  to  fling  English  tragedy  as  we  know  it 
shouting  into  the  world,  was  that  the  popular 
stage  was  scarcely  touched  at  all  by  this  classical, 
Senecan  movement;  the  children's  companies  and 
ordinary  court  plays  were  only  partly  and  patch- 
ily  affected;  but  private  performances  in  the 
Inner  Temple  and  Gray's  Inn  had  proudly  and 
completely  adopted  the  Senecan  (or,  generally, 
classical)  style.  As  these  were  often  given  be- 
fore the  Queen,  they  had  great  influence  in 
spreading  the  impression  that  this  type  of  trag- 
edy was  the  highest,  the  only  type  intellectual 
and  cultivated  people  could  aspire  to.  The  Sene- 
can boom  did  not  leave  much  directly  to  Eliza- 
bethan drama;  far  less  than  is  generally  made 
out.  It  left  perhaps  a  ghost  tradition,  the  much- 
advertised  and  over-valued  "revenge  motive," 
and  the  tendency  to  division  into  five  acts.  But 
indirectly  it  had  value  in  tightening  up  the 
drama,  pulling  the  scattered  scenes  which  appeal 


ORIGINS  OF  DRAMA  61 

to  the  English,  a  httle,  but  not  too  much,  into 
one  play.  And  it  was  of  vast  use  as  an  ideal. 
It  enabled  the  dramatists  to  write  for  their  audi- 
ences but  above  them.  It  set  the  audiences  an 
aesthetic  standard,  shook  them  into  artistic  moral- 
ity. Left  to  itself,  this  movement  would  have, 
and  did,  become  academic,  cold,  dead.  But 
Fulke  Greville,  Alexander,  even  Ben  Jonson, 
did  not  get  the  full  benefit  of  it.  The  best  of  it, 
and  the  best  of  the  popular  stage,  were  torn  out, 
combined,  and  revitalised  by  Kyd  and  Marlowe. 
Towards  that  the  times  were  ripening.  The 
drama  was  getting  a  standing,  the  first  important 
step.  It  was  at  once  popular  and  fashionable. 
And,  though  a  few  Puritan  fanatics  had  started 
a  protest,  the  main  mass  of  the  people  were 
against  them.  That  gradual  depletion  of  the 
theatre-audiences  which  took  place  during  the 
next  century,  when  bourgeois  democracy  slowly 
became  one  with  Puritanism,  had  not  com- 
menced. The  establishment  of  fixed  theatres  in 
London  must  have  raised  the  level  of  the  per- 
formances; and,  the  second  important  step,  it 
was  educating  and  preparing  an  audience.  For 
an  audience  must  be  trained  and  trained  together, 
as  much  as  a  troupe  of  actors.  It  is  equally  one 
of  the  conditions  of  great  drama. 


Chapter  III 

THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA 

There  are  many  ways  of  considering  a  subject 
like  the  Elizabethan  drama.  You  can  take  the 
plays  by  authors.  Naturally,  it  is  one  of  the  best 
ways ;  and  it  is  the  only  way  that  was  employed 
up  to  quite  recently.  To  use  that  method  alone 
leads  to  queer  blindnesses.  And  it  is  apt  to  end 
in  the  "our  Shakespeare"  business,  an  easy  and 
unprofitable  way  of  taking  art. 

Then  there  is  division  by  subjects,  the  method 
of  Professor  Schelling  and  of  Polonius.  This 
counteracts  the  evils  of  the  first  way;  but  it  is 
often  rather  unmeaning:  Measure  for  Measure 
gets  grouped  with  the  "Romantic  Comedies." 
That  is  to  say,  the  fault  is  in  the  unreality  of  the 
classes.  They  should  rather  be  grouped  by  taste. 
An  arrangement  under  purely  fanciful  names 
would  be  more  practical.  Love's  Labour  Lost 
would  go  with  Lyly  under  "Court  Butterfly"; 
Measure  for  Measure  might  jostle  The  Fawn  or 
Hamlet  in  the  "Brass-on-Tongue"  sub-division 
of  the  "Leaves-a-Taste-in-the-Mouth"  group. 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA      63 

And  there  is  the  reader's  way,  liamb's  way, 
of  just  picking  out  the  best  plays.  It  has  a  lot 
to  be  said  for  it. 

All  three  methods,  and  others,  have  their  com- 
plemental  merits.     But  I  think  the  most  useful 
way  of  surveying  material  like  this  is  by  a  com- 
bination,  in   the    following   way.      One    should 
divide  the  plays,  roughly  chronologically,  accord- 
ing to  their  style  or  taste,  the  general  Stimmung 
of  them,  with  a  certain  reference  to  authorship, 
and  distinct  emphasis  on  the  merits  and  possibili- 
ties of  the  various  styles.    For  though,  of  course, 
when  you  stop  to  consider  any  particular  part, 
these   questions   of  influence,   "schools,"   styles, 
periods,  and  the  rest,  immediately  sink  into  their 
proper  subordination,  yet,  for  a  rapid  survey, 
they  do  correspond  to  certain  realities.     It  is 
important  to  know  that  a  writer  was  aiming  at  a 
certain  atmosphere,  or  influenced  by  it.     And 
some  of  these  atmospheres,  and  these  aims,  are 
much  healthier  for  art  than  others.    At  any  rate, 
I  think  that  to  explain  what  Webster's  plays 
really  are,  it  is  necessary  to  show  where  they  fit 
in  with  the  rest  of  the  Elizabethan  drama.    And 
as  I  do  not  know  of  any  survey  of  this  drama 
that  seems  to  show  the  main  outlines  right,  espe- 
cially with  regard  to  comparative  goodness — the 
scientific   literary   historian   makes   every   play 


64  JOHN  WEBSTER 

equally  dull,  the  Swinburnian  critic  makes  every 
author  equally  supreme — I  shall  try  to  give,  very 
briefly,  my  own  views. 

Soon  after  Lyly  began  to  breathe  into  comedy 
(with  which  I  am  not  concerned)  a  movement 
that  was  near  to  being  life,  and  a  prettiness  that 
was  still  nearer  beauty,  Kyd  and  Marlowe  blew 
life,  strength,  and  everything  else  into  tragedy. 
To  say  that  they  grafted  the  energy  of  popular 
tragedy  on  the  form  of  classical,  would  be  to 
wrong  by  a  soft  metaphor  their  bloody  and  vital 
violence.  It  was  rather  as  if  a  man  should  dash 
two  dead  babies  together  into  one  strident  and 
living  being.  Kyd,  of  course,  does  not  really 
stand  by  Marlowe.  But  he  seems  further  below 
him  than  is  fair,  because  Marlowe's  genius  was 
more  literary,  and  so  lives  longer.  Both  brought 
light  and  life  to  tragedy.  Kyd  filled  Seneca's 
veins  with  English  blood.  He  gave  his  audience 
living  people,  strong  emotions,  vendetta,  murder, 
pain,  real  lines  of  verse,  and,  stiffly  enough,  the 
stateliness  of  art.  He  thrilled  a  torch  in  the 
gloom  of  the  English  theatre.  Marlowe  threw 
open  a  thousand  doors,  and  let  in  the  sun.  He 
did  it,  in  the  prologue  to  Tamhurlaine,  with  the 
superb  insolence  and  lovely  brutality  of  youth. 
His  love  of  the  body,  his  passion  for  the  world 
of  colour  and  stuff,  his  glorious  atheism,  "giant- 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA      65 

ism  'gainst  Heaven,"  were  trumpets  in  that 
morning.  The  blood  still  sings  to  them.  Mar- 
lowe is  less  representative,  stands  clearer  of  his 
period,  than  almost  any  Elizabethan.  He  was 
of  no  school,  had  no  followers.  Others,  Shake- 
speare, for  instance,  caught  something  of  his 
trick  of  blank  verse,  or  tried  a  play  or  two  in 
his  manner.  But  there  was  no  body  of  drama 
that  partook  of  the  atmosphere  of  ferocious, 
youthful,  passionate  tragedy  that  distinguishes 
Marlowe's  work.  He  stands  rather,  in  his  joy 
of  the  world,  and  irreligion,  as  the  herald  of  the 
whole  age,  and  of  that  short  song  of  passion  it 
could  utter  before  the  beginning  of  the  night. 
His  loneliness  is  explicable.  It  was  not  only 
that  no  contemporary  was  old  and  great  enough 
to  take  all  he  had  to  give.  But  his  dramatic 
method  was  unique.  He  was  not  a  dramatist  in 
the  way  the  others  were.  He  was — in  this  some- 
thing like  the  young  Shakespeare,  but  far  more 
so — a  lyric  writer  using  drama.  "Plot"  does  not 
matter  to  him.  Each  scene  he  works  up  into  an 
intense  splendid  lyric.  They  are  of  different 
kinds,  but  put  together  they  have  unity.  The 
whole  is  a  lyric  drama.  No  one  else,  except,  con- 
ceivably, Webster,  in  a  slight  degree,  used  this 
artistic  method.  Marlowe  was  an  extreme  poin- 
tilliste.     He  produced  his  whole  effect  by  very 


66  JOHN  WEBSTER 

large  blobs  of  pure  colour,  laid  on  side  by  side. 
The  rest  were  ordinary  semi-impressionists,  with 
a  tale  to  tell.  Only  Webster  more  than  rarely 
achieved  expressionism. 

One  other  gift  Kyd  and  Marlowe,  especially 
JMarlowe,  gave  their  contemporaries;  blank 
verse.  Before  them  was  the  Stone  Age;  they 
gave  the  poet  a  new  weapon  of  steel.  Marlowe 
was  drunk  on  decasyllabics,  the  lilt  and  clang  and 
rhetoric  of  them.  How  he  must  have  shouted, 
writing  each  line  of  Tamhurlaine!  It  all  fits  in 
with  the  rest  of  this  outburst  of  true  great  trag- 
edy in  the  eighties.  But  it  was  only  an  outburst 
of  youth ;  and  the  sentimentality  and  tediousness 
of  youth  had  to  be  gone  through  before  the  best 
times  could  be  won.  The  rest  of  the  history  of 
the  drama  during  this  century  is  mainly  con- 
cerned with  the  histories  and  chronicles.  Some- 
thing— it  may  have  been  the  Spanish  Armada — 
made  the  audiences  demand  this  dreary  kind  of 
play.  Their  other  cry  (I  have  only  space  to  dis- 
cuss the  best  audiences  and  plays)  seems  to  have 
been  for  a  slight  kind  of  romantic  comedy.  They 
swallowed  everything,  of  course,  as  at  all  periods 
of  this  eighty  years.  But  these  two  types  of 
play,  were,  perhaps,  most  prominent. 

Critics  have  always  idiotically  thought  it  their 
duty  to  praise  these  histories;  partly  because 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA      67 

Shakespeare,  in  obedience  to  popular  demand, 
wrote  some;  partly  because  they  are  supposed 
to  exemplify  the  patriotism  of  the  Elizabethans, 
and  we  are  supposed  to  enjoy  that  patriotism. 
These  chronicle-plays  fit  in,  it  is  not  very  clear 
how,  with  Drake,  Hawkins,  and  the  rest  of  the 
"island  story."  And  those  numerous  literary  or 
dramatic  critics  who  do  not  care  for  literature  or 
the  drama,  nod  their  sentimental  approbation. 
It  sounds  too  fantastic  for  truth,  but  it  is  true, 
that  the  ultimate  defence  of  Elizabethan  drama 
offered  by  many  writers  on  it,  is  that  it  holds  up 
so  faithful  a  glass  to  the  "bustling,  many-sided 
life  of  that  wonderful  time."  Such  wretched 
antiquaries  beam  mild  approval  on  these  new 
proofs  of  the  Elizabethan's  interest  in  his  coun- 
try's history. 

It  must  be  clearly  decided  that  these  histories 
were  a  transient,  dreary,  childish  kind.  They 
preserved  the  worst  features  of  Elizabethan 
drama  in  their  worst  form ;  the  shapelessness,  the 
puerility,  the  obvious  moralising,  the  succession 
of  scenes  that  only  told  a  narrative,  the  entire 
absence  of  dramatic  unity,  the  mixture  of  farce 
and  tragedy  that  did  not  come  off.  I  do  not 
mean  (for  the  moment)  to  say  that  the  Eliza- 
bethan type  of  play  was  bad,  as  such;  only  that 
when  done  in  this  form  it  was  silly  and  without 


68  JOHN  WEBSTER 

value.  One  or  two  tragedies  that  were  written 
in  the  form  of  histories  are  some  good;  Richard 
II  and  Edward  II,  And,  of  com'se,  in  his  worst 
efforts  Shakespeare  always  leaves  touches  of 
imagination  and  distinction.  But  as  a  whole 
these  histories  are  utterly  worthless. 

Something  similar  is  the  case  with  the  romantic 
comedies.  Neither  in  themselves,  nor  as  a  sign 
of  the  taste  of  the  times,  have  they  much  value. 
Occasionally  they  achieve  a  sort  of  prettiness,  the 
charm  of  a  stage-spring  or  an  Academy  allegory 
of  youth.  And  Shakespeare  threw  a  pink  magic 
over  them.  But  it  should  be  left  to  girls'  schools 
to  think  that  the  comedies  he  obligingly  tossed 
off  exist  in  the  same  universe  with  his  later 
tragedies.  The  whole  stuff  of  this  kind  of  play 
— disguises,  sentimentality,  girls  in  boys'  clothes, 
southern  romance — was  very  thin.  It  might, 
perhaps,  under  different  circumstances,  have 
been  worked  up  into  exquisite,  light,  half -passion- 
ate comedy  of  a  limited  kind.  It  did  not  achieve 
even  this  success. 

There  are  one  or  two  isolated  good  plays  of 
indefinable  genus,  like  A  Midsummer  Niglifs 
Dream.  But  on  the  whole  this  period  of  silliness 
or  undistinguished  prettiness  between  the  great 
years  of  Marlowe  (c.  1588)  and  the  wonderful, 
sultry  flower-time  of  the  next  century,  is  only 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA      69 

redeemed  by  one  kind  of  drama  that  was  seri- 
ously trying  to  move  serious  artistic  emotions. 
It  is  a  kind  that  is  despised  by  the  refinement  of 
modern  criticism,  condemned  by  the  word 
"crude";  what  is  called  "domestic  tragedy." 
These  indigenous  plays,  descendants  probably  of 
unknown  myriads  of  popular  tragedies  in  Eng- 
land, were  nearly  always  dramatisations  of  re- 
cent occurrences.  Some  are  bad,  and  all  are  as 
"crude"  as  life.  But  they  kept  people  in  touch 
with  realities,  with  the  brutality  of  blood  and 
death.  The  theatre  might  so  easily  have  gone 
irrevocably  soft  during  these  years.  They  kept 
it  fit  for  the  tragedy  that  was  to  come ;  and  they 
profoundly  influenced  that  tragedy  for  the  eighty 
years  of  "Elizabethan  drama."  But  it  was  at 
this  time  that  they  were  especially  common.  The 
only  long  study  of  the  subject  ^  contains  a  list  of 
the  plays  of  this  nature.  There  are  twenty-four 
known;  fourteen  of  them  occur  in  the  period 
1592-1603,  two  earlier,  eight  later.  It  is  note- 
worthy that  of  the  three  best  we  know,  one, 
Arden  of  Fever  sham,  comes  at  least  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  period,  almost  in  Marlowe's  time; 
the  second,  A    Woman  Killed  with  Kindness 

*  Das  hilrgerliclie  Trauersjnel  in  England.  Singer.  The  list 
counts  Arden  of  Feversham  as  1592.  It  is  probably  earlier,  1586 
or  so. 


70  JOHN  WEBSTER 

(Hey wood's  best  play),  comes  right  at  the  end, 
in  the  golden  years  of  the  next  century,  and  the 
third,  A  Yorkshire  Tragedy,  is  generally  dated 
as  right  in  the  middle  of  that  great  age,  in  1605. 

For  there  was  a  period — 1600-1610  are  the 
rough  inside  limits — that  stood  out  an  infinity 
above  the  rest.  Nearly  all  the  good  stuff  of 
Elizabethan  drama  was  in  it  or  of  it.  Except 
in  comedy,  there  are  only  the  lonely  spring  of 
Marlowe  and  the  Indian  summer  of  Ford  out- 
side it.  And  it  is  not  only  that  it  was  Shake- 
speare's great  time.  That  is  partly  both  cause 
and  effect,  and  our  great  good  fortune. 

The  whole  age,  in  drama  and  beyond,  was  alive 
with  passion  and  the  serious  stuff  of  art.  Nor 
was  it  only  that  so  much  of  great  merit  was  pro- 
duced in  this  short  time.  Nearly  all  the  work  of 
the  period  shared,  apart  from  its  goodness,  in  a 
special  atmosphere.  It  is  extremely  important 
to  recognise  the  absolute  distinctness  and  su- 
preme greatness  of  this  period,  its  sudden  ap- 
pearance and  its  swift  and  complete  end.  There 
is  only  space  here  to  hint  at  its  characteristic 
features.  It  was  heralded  (poetry  is  generally 
a  few  years  ahead  of  drama)  by  Shakespeare's 
sonnets,  and  the  poems  of  Donne — who,  in  spite 
of  Ben  Jonson,  did  not  write  all  his  best  things 
before  1598.     Poets,  and  men  in  general,  had 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA      71 

reached  a  surfeit  of  beauty.  The  Renaissance 
joy  in  loveliness,  the  romantic  youthfulness  of 
the  age,  the  wave  of  cheerful  patriotism,  all 
passed  at  the  same  time.  Boyhood  passed.  Im- 
agination at  this  time  suddenly  woke  to  life.  Its 
flights  were  to  the  strangest  corners  and  the 
pitchiest  barathrum  of  the  deep.  Intellect  was 
pressed  into  the  service  of  the  emotions,  and  the 
emotions  were  beaten  into  fantastic  figures  by 
the  intellect.  The  nature  of  man  became  sud- 
denly complex,  and  grew  bitter  at  its  own  com- 
plexity. The  lust  of  fame  and  the  desire  for 
immortality  were  racked  by  a  perverse  hunger 
for  only  oblivion;  and  the  consummation  of 
human  love  was  observed  to  take  place  within 
the  bright,  black  walls  of  a  flea.  It  seemed 
as  though  all  thought  and  all  the  arts  at 
this  time  became  almost  incoherent  with  the 
strain  of  an  inhuman  energy  within  them,  and  a 
Titanic  reaching  for  impossible  ends.  Poetry 
strove  to  adumbrate  infinity,  or,  finding  mysti- 
cism too  mild,  to  take  the  most  secret  Kingdom 
of  Heaven  by  storm.  Imagination,  seeking 
arcane  mysteries,  would  startle  the  soul  from  its 
lair  by  unthinkable  paradoxes.  Madness  was 
curiously  explored,  and  all  the  doubtful  coasts 
between  delirium  and  sanity.  The  exultations  of 
living  were  re-invigorated  by  the  strength  of  a 


72  JOHN  WEBSTER 

passionate  pessimism ;  for  even  scepticism  in  that 
age  was  fecund  and  vigorous,  and  rejoiced  in  the 
whirling  gloom  it  threw  over  life.  The  mind, 
intricately  considering  its  extraordinaiy  prison 
of  flesh,  pondered  long  on  the  exquisite  tran- 
siency of  the  height  of  love  and  the  long  decom- 
position that  death  brings.  The  most  gigantic 
crimes  and  vices  were  noised,  and  lashed  immedi- 
ately by  satire,  with  the  too-furious  passion  of  the 
flagellant.  For  Satire  flourishes,  with  Trag- 
edy, at  such  times.  The  draperies  of  refinement 
and  her  smug  hierarchy  were  torn  away  from  the 
world,  and  Truth  held  sway  there  with  his  ter- 
rific court  of  morbidity,  scepticism,  despair,  and 
life.  The  veils  of  romanticism  were  stripped 
away:  Tragedy  and  Farce  stood  out,  for  men 
to  shudder  or  to  roar. 

In  a  time  so  essentially  healthy  for  all  that  is 
fine  in  man,  and  especially  in  his  arts,  it  is  no 
wonder  that  the  best  in  a  great  many  different 
styles  was  being  done.  But  each  of  these  bests 
has  some  trace  of  the  spirit  of  the  times.  Chap- 
man, for  instance,  was  doing  his  finest  serious 
work.  Bussy  D'Amhois  comes  near  the  begin- 
ning of  the  period,  the  two  Byron  plays  later  on, 
The  Revenge  of  Bussy  at  the  end.  Chapman  is 
of  the  time  in  his  intellect,  but  not  in  his  emo- 
tions.   His  devotion  to  the  "Senecal  man,"  and 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA      73 

the  archaistic  austerities  of  his  style,  are  his 
alone.  He  was  too  moral  for  the  morbidity  of 
the  others,  and  too  dispassionate  for  their  gloom. 
He  was  not  interested  in  the  same  feelings.  But 
his  mind  delighted  in  the  same  intricate  convolu- 
tions of  thought  and  half-absurd,  serious  para- 
doxes. And  occasionally  he  strikes  into  those 
queer  horrors  that  delighted  Donne  and  Mar- 
ston,  and  Tourneur  and  Webster  and  Shake- 
speare. He  never  made  a  great  success  of  drama, 
because  he  thought  in  a  literary  and  rhetorical 
rather  than  dramatic  way.  He  is  good  reading, 
but  he  would  not  be  good  seeing.  'There  are  two 
ways  of  displaying  character  in  literary  drama, 
through  words  and  through  action.  Chapman 
has  only  the  first ;  Webster  had  something  of  the 
second  too.  Webster  revered  Chapman,  but  he 
was  not  much  influenced  by  him.  Ben  Jonson 
also  is  at  first  sight  apart  from  the  spirit  of  this 
period,  although  his  best  work  belongs  to  it.  His 
theories  of  tragedy  prevented  him  from  con- 
tributing to  the  Marston-Tourneur- Webster 
type  of  play.  He  would  have  condemned  the 
atmosphere  which  is  their  great  virtue  as  un- 
classical.  They  probably  did  so — we  know  Web- 
ster did  so — themselves.  But  he  is  very  relevant, 
all  the  same.  In  the  first  place  that  attitude  of 
professionalism  in  art  and  respect  for  the  rules 


74  JOHN  WEBSTER 

which  he  stood  for  all  his  life,  was  a  great  factor 
in  raising  the  dignity  of  drama  and  the  standard 
of  the  dramatists.  But  Jonson's  chief  influence 
and  achievement  in  English  drama  was  in  found- 
ing the  Comedy  of  Humours ;  and  both  this  kind 
of  play  and  his  examples  fit  in  with  the  rest  of 
the  time.  It  is  so  far  from  sentimentalism,  such 
a  breaking  with  romantic  comedy,  this  boisterous 
personification  of  the  "humours"  of  mankind, 
with  its  heartiness  and  rough  strength.  It  has 
the  life  of  the  time.  Jonson  brought  comedy 
home  to  England  and  to  men.  The  characters 
in  his  comedy  were  not  complete  men,  but  they 
were  human  caricatures,  the  right  stuff  for  farce 
and  loud  laughter.  Their  vigour  grew  amazing 
under  his  handling.  In  result  he  gave  the  stage 
the  best  comedies  of  all  the  age.  Their  coarse 
splendour  of  life  was  never  approached  till 
twenty  years  or  more  had  passed,  and  his  influ- 
ence again  was  strong,  in  the  work  of  some  of 
his  "sons."  There,  comedy  survived  the  floods  of 
sweetness  under  which  tragedy  utterly  perished. 
But  if  Epicoene  and  The  Alchemist  are  admi- 
rably complementary  in  this  Pantheon  to 
Sophonisha  and  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  and 
Timon  of  Athens  and  Macbeth,  other  works  of 
Jonson  are  something  more.  It  is  probable  that 
the  additions  to  the  1602,  The  Spanish  Tragedy, 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA      75 

are  Jonson's.  If  so,  he  is  responsible  for  some 
of  the  finest  scenes  of  imaginative  horror  in  that 
hterature.  These  few  pages  (written  in  1600) 
contain  most  of  the  terror  and  splendour  of  the 
next  ten  years.  They  set  the  tune  unfalteringly. 
And  Jonson  did  also  what  Marston  never  quite 
succeeded  in  doing,  he  wrote  a  good  comedy 
which  had  more  of  this  seventeenth  century 
pungency  in  it  than  any  tragedy,  a  comedy  that 
is  a  real  companion  to  the  tragedies  of  Webster. 
The  mirth  of  Tourneur  is  horrible;  Languebeau 
SnufFe  poises  one  sickly  between  laughter  and 
loathing.  Volpone  is  like  one  long  laugh  of 
Tourneur's,  inspired  by  a  tenfold  vitality.  It  is 
amazing,  one  of  the  few  complete  works  of  genius 
of  the  Elizabethan  age.  The  hot  cruelty  and 
vigorous  unhealthiness  of  it!  Its  very  artistic 
perfection  is  frightening  and  exotic. 

But  perhaps  the  main  current  of  strength  in 
the  drama  during  these  years,  and  certainly  the 
most  important  for  this  essay,  is  that  which  ran 
through  Marston  and  Tourneur  to  Webster. 
Donne  was  in  connection  with  it,  too,  from  the 
side  of  poetry  and  thought.  The  relation  of 
Shakespeare  with  the  whole  of  this  period,  of 
which  he,  then  at  his  greatest,  was,  to  our  eyes, 
the  centre,  is  curious.  His  half -connections,  the 
way  he  was  influenced  and  yet  transmuted  the 


76  JOHN  WEBSTER 

influences,  would  require  a  good  deal  of  space  to 
detail.  But  in  this,  his  "dark  period" — whatever 
it  was,  neuralgia,  a  spiritual  crisis,  Mary  Fitton, 
or  literary  fashion,  that  caused  it — he  was  not 
unique  or  eccentric  in  the  kind  of  his  art.  His 
humour  was  savage,  he  railed  against  sex,  his 
tragedies  were  bloody,  his  heroes  meditated  curi- 
ously on  mortality.  It  was  all  in  the  fashion. 
His  gloom  was  not  conspicuous  in  the  general 
darkness.  He  had,  in  Hamlet  especially,  affini- 
ties with  this  ISIarston- Webster  group.  His  ter- 
rific and  morbid  studies  of  madness  influenced 
theirs. 

Marston  is  one  of  the  most  sinister,  least  un- 
derstood, figures  in  Elizabethan  literature.  More 
than  anybody  else,  he  determined  the  channels 
in  which  the  great  flood  of  those  ten  years  was  to 
flow.  His  life  was  curious.  He  started,  like  so 
many  of  them,  by  writing  vivid,  violent,  crabbed 
satire.  He  went  on  to  play-making,  which  he 
pursued  for  eight  years  with  great  success.  He 
was  much  admired  and  very  influential,  but  he 
always  presented  himself  to  the  world  with  a  typ- 
ical, passionate  ungraciousness.  At  the  end  of 
the  eight  years  he  renounced  the  applause  that 
he  so  liked  disliking,  and  went  into  the  Church. 
He  had  a  queer  lust  for  oblivion.  His  tombstone 
bears  Oblivioni  Sacrum,    It  was  his  personality 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA      77 

rather  than  his  powers  that  was  the  most  stupen- 
dous thing  about  him.  To  us  he  seems  nearly 
always  just  not  to  bring  his  effects  off;  but  his 
contemporaries,  whatever  they  thought,  could 
not  escape  him. 

He  started  the  movement  of  this  period  by 
resuscitating  the  old  blood-and-thunder  revenge 
tragedy.  It  was  precisely  what  was  needed,  but 
he  clothed  it  with  his  own  peculiar  temperament 
of  violent  and  bloody  satire.  It  was  this  that 
really  attracted  the  writers  of  the  time.  He  gave 
them  several  plays  steeped  in  it,  both  comedies 
and  tragedies  by  the  ordinary  classifications, 
really  only  of  one  kind.  The  horror  and  inhu- 
man violence  of  his  laughter  lit  up  those  years 
like  a  vivid  flash  of  lightning.  He  is  responsible 
for  that  peculiar  macabre  taste,  like  the  taste  of 
copper,  that  is  necessary  to,  if  it  is  not  the  cause 
of,  their  splendour.  But  he  was  of  his  age  in  its 
strength  as  well  as  in  its  morbidity. 

"My  God's  my  arm ;  my  life  my  heaven,  my  grave 
To  me  all  end," 

says  Syphax.  Chapman  could  scarcely  have 
equalled  the  strong  nobility  of  it. 

Marston's  chief  passion  was  for  truth.  He 
preferred  it  if  it  hurt;  but  he  loved  it  anyhow. 
It  comes  out  in  the  snarling  speculations  and 


78  JOHN  WEBSTER 

harangues  of  those  satirical  malcontents  he  was 
so  fond  of.  He  bequeathed  the  type  to  Tourneur 
and  Webster.  For  Marston,  who  was  a  wit  and 
a  scholar  and  a  great  poet,  was  pre-eminently  a 
satirist.  It  was  because  he  loved  truth  in  that 
queer,  violent  way  that  some  men  do  love,  desir- 
ous to  hurt.  It  fits  in  with  his  whole  tempera- 
ment— vivid,  snarling,  itching,  dirty.  He  loved 
dirt  for  truth's  sake;  also  for  its  own.  Filth, 
horror,  and  wit  were  his  legacy;  it  was  a  splendid 
one.  Some  characters  too,  besides  the  Malcon- 
tent, were  his  offspring.  He  may  have  origi- 
nated the  heroine  who  was  wicked  or  non-moral, 
fascinating  and  not  a  fool.  It  was  a  type  that 
was  refreshingly  and  characteristically  promi- 
nent in  the  great  period.  Cleopatra,  Vittoria, 
the  Insatiate  Countess — the  womanly  heroine 
fades  to  a  watery  mist  when  they  sweep  on. 
Marston  is  more  famous  for  what  he  lent  than 
what  he  had,  but  what  he  had  is  superb. 

Of  Tourneur  (the  dates  of  whose  play,  or  two 
plays,  are  most  uncertain)  less  need  be  said. 
Nowadays  he  is  thought  better  than  JNIarston. 
He  is  really  far  his  inferior.  He  does  not  shock 
you  in  the  same  way  by  hideously  violent  con- 
trasts. He  is  more  level;  he  is  more  conscious 
of  his  purpose;  and  it  may  be  ti'ue  that  none  of 
Marston's  plays  is  as  good  as  his  (if  he  did  write 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA      79 

The  Revenger's  Tragedy) .  But  Marston  is  the 
greater  genius.  Still,  Tourneur  with  his  brilliant 
and  feverish  morbidity  carried  on  the  line.  He 
did  not  influence  Webster  so  deeply  as  Marston 
did.  It  was  natural.  He  used  for  the  most  part 
external  horrors  for  horror's  sake.  He  could  not 
comprehend  those  horrors  of  the  mind  and  soul 
that  Shakespeare  and  Webster  knew  and  Mar- 
ston glimpsed.  But  Tourneur  was  in  sight  of  the 
end  of  greatness ;  the  period  of  horrors  was  com- 
ing to  a  close. 

For  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  were  beginning 
their  fatal  reign.  At  first  cleanness  and  great- 
ness were  still  there;  and  while  Beaumont  lived 
the  degradation  could  not  go  far,  for  he  had  a 
sense  of  humour  and  satire.  His  sentimentality 
had  strength  beneath  it.  He  could  handle  metre 
like  an  Elizabethan.  None  of  these  things  could 
be  said  of  Fletcher.  He  had  only  a  kind  of  wit, 
a  kind  of  prettiness,  and  an  inelastic  sub-variety 
of  the  blank  verse  line.  But  for  the  first  six  years 
or  so,  from  1608-1614,  they,  principally  Beau- 
mont, were  doing  fairly  good  work.  It  is  good 
work  of  a  fatally  new  kind,  but  the  vices  of  the 
new  have  not  yet  grown  to  their  full.  To  these 
years  The  Faithful  Shepherdess,  The  Knight  of 
the  Burning  Pestle,  Philaster,  and  The  Maid's 


80  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Tragedy  belong;  but  drama  was  on  a  downhill 
course. 

It  has  sometimes  been  said  that  the  most  ex- 
traordinary gap  in  the  history  of  our  literature, 
or  of  any  other,  is  the  one  between  the  beginning 
and  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century.  That 
little  break  of  twenty  years  in  the  middle  seems 
at  first  sight  to  have  made  a  tremendous  differ- 
ence. Dry  den's  inability  to  understand  Shake- 
speare and  his  fellows  is  a  commonplace;  and 
one  can  see  how  inevitable  it  was  from  their 
minds.  The  cataclysm  of  the  Civil  War,  social 
changes,  and  the  sojourn  of  the  generation 
abroad,  are  generally  held  responsible.  (Sir 
George  Etherege  saw  the  premieres  of  Moliere 
in  Paris.)  Closer  inspection  shows  the  wrong- 
ness  of  this  view.  Anyone  familiar  with  the  life, 
literature,  and  drama  of  court  circles  just  before 
the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  will  realise  that 
the  extraordinary  thing  is  how  like  they  are  to 
the  products  of  the  Restoration  period.  There 
was  no  gap.  Sir  John  Denham's  The  Sophy 
(1641)  is  almost  indistinguishable  from  a  Res- 
toration play.  The  true  gap  is  far  more  remark- 
able and  far  earlier.  It  is  hidden  by  over-lap- 
pings, but  its  presence  is  obvious  about  the  year 
1611.  Five  years  before  that,  England  was 
thunderous  with  the  most  glorious  tragedy  and 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA       81 

the  strangest  passion.  Five  years  after  that, 
Fletcher  and  the  silly  sweetness  of  tragi-comedy 
were  all-powerful.  The  path,  unmistakeably  the 
same  path,  led  on  and  down,  through  Massinger 
and  Shirley.  Five  years  before  that,  the  intel- 
lect and  the  imagination  had  been  dizzily  and 
joyfully  up-borne  on  that  wit  Chapman  thinks 
so  fine : 

"Your  wit  is  of  the  true  Pierian  spring, 
That  can  make  anything  of  anything." 

It  was  exhilarating,  if  sometimes  irritating. 
The  wit  that  succeeded  it  was  Court  humour, 
born  of  the  fancy,  touched  with  softness, 
feeble-winged.  Heart  supplanted  brain,  and 
senses  sense. 

For  all  this  Fletcher  was  to  blame,  or,  if  the 
causes  were  deeper,  he  stands  a  figurehead  for 
our  abuse.  What  the  causes  of  such  movements 
are,  it  is  always  difficult  to  say.  The  gradual 
change  in  the  personnel  of  the  theatre  and  its  au- 
diences may  have  had  something  to  do  with  it. 
Puritanism  and  democracy  were  becoming  grad- 
ually and  deplorably  identified.  This  meant  that 
the  theatre  was  being  based  on  only  one  class. 
The  audiences  were  becoming  upper-class,  or 
of  the  upper-class  party;  it  is  even  more  note- 
worthy that  the  same  thing  was  happening  to  the 


82  JOHN  WEBSTER 

dramatists.  Henceforward  they  were  almost  en- 
tirely drawn  from  court  circles  and  the  upper 
classes.  Or  the  reason  for  the  degeneracy  may 
have  lain  in  some  deeper  weariness  of  men's 
hearts.  Anyhow,  the  degeneracy  was  there. 
Splendour  became  softness  and  tragedy  tragi- 
comedy. These  later  dramatists  were  like 
Ophelia. 


"Thought  and  affliction,  passion,  hell  itself. 
She  turns  to  favour  and  to  prettiness." 


It  was  in  this  sinking  to  prettiness  and  to  ab- 
sence of  seriousness  that  the  "degeneracy"  of  the 
later  Elizabethan  drama  lies,  not,  as  some  mod- 
ern critics  say,  in  the  selection  of  such  admirable 
subjects  as  incest  for  their  dramas.  Comj^are  a 
typical  Fletcherian  tragedy,  Bonduca,  with  one 
of  its  predecessors.  It  is  the  absence  of  serious 
intention,  the  only  desire  to  please,  the  lack  of 
artistic  morality,  that  make  such  plays,  with 
their  mild  jokes,  their  co-ordinate  double  plots, 
and  their  unreality,  so  ultimately  dreary  and 
fifth-rate  to  a  sensible  reader.  But  such  stuff 
overwhelmed  England.  That  vulgarest  of  writ- 
ers, Middleton,  who  had  been  doing  admirable, 
coarse,  low-level  comedy,  rather  Jonsonian  and 
quite  realistic,  turned  about  1609  to  romantic 


THE  ELIZABETHAN  DRAMA       83 

comedy.    And  by  1612  even  Tourneur  had  writ- 
ten a  tragi-comedy,  Tlie  Nobleman. 

But  even  when  the  triumph  of  prettiness  was 
on  its  way  to  completion,  there  was  one  shghtly 
old-fashioned  figure  still  faithful  to  that  larger 
prime.  Serious  tragedy  seems  only  to  have 
reached  Webster,  after  it  had  left  everybody 
else.  In  1612  and  1613  he  wrote  two  of  the  most 
amazing  products  of  that  amazing  period.  His 
powerful  personality  coloured  what  he  wrote, 
and  yet  these  two  plays  are  more  representative 
than  any  that  had  led  to  them,  of  the  period  be- 
hind them.  The  stream  swept  straight  on  from 
Marston  and  Tourneur  to  Webster.  With  him 
the  sinister  waves,  if  they  lost  something  of  their 
strange  iridescence,  won  greater  gloom  and  pro- 
fundity. After  him  they  plunged  into  the  depths 
of  earth.  He  stands  in  his  loneliness,  first  of 
that  long  line  of  "last  Elizabethans."  As  the 
edge  of  a  cliff  seems  higher  than  the  rest  for 
the  sheer  descent  in  front  of  it,  Webster,  the 
Webster  of  these  two  plays,  appears  even 
mistier  and  grander  than  he  really  is,  because 
he  is  the  last  of  Earth,  looking  out  over  a  sea 
of  saccharine. 


Chapter  IV 

JOHN  WEBSTER 

John  Webster  is  one  of  the  strangest  figures 
in  our  literature.  He  was  working  for  quite 
twenty  years.  We  have  at  least  four  plays  in 
which  he  collaborated,  and  three  by  him  alone; 
but  through  all  the  period  and  in  all  his  work 
he  is  quite  ordinary  and  undistinguished,  except 
for  two  plays  which  come  quite  close  together 
in  the  middle.  For  two  or  three  years,  about 
1612,  he  was  a  great  genius;  for  the  rest  he  was, 
if  not  indistinguishable,  entirely  commonplace. 
Coleridge  does  not  more  extraordinarily  prove 
Apollonian  fickleness.  Webster  makes  one  be- 
lieve successful  art  depends  as  much  on  a  wild 
chance,  a  multiple  coincidence,  as  Browning 
found  love  did.  If  he  had  not  had  time  in  that 
middle  period ;  if  it  had  come  a  little  later,  under 
the  Fletcherian  influence;  if  he  had  been  born 
twenty  years  later;  if —  .  .  .  He  was  just  in 
time;  the  subject  just  suited  him;  the  traditional 
atmosphere  of  the  kind  of  play  called  out  his 
greatest  gifts;  the  right  influence  had  preceded 

84 


JOHN  WEBSTER  85 

him;  he  was  somehow  not  free  to  write  the  "true 
dramatic  poem"  or  "sententious  tragedy"  he 
wanted  to.  And  so  these  two  great  tragedies 
happened  to  exist.  That  easy  and  comfortable 
generalisation  of  the  Philistine  "genius  will  out!" 
finds  signal  refutation  in  Webster.  I  shall  give 
a  short  general  account  of  his  life  and  activities, 
and  then  examine  his  work  more  closely. 

We  know  a  great  deal  about  Webster's  life. 
He  was  born  in  the  latter  half  of  the  sixteenth 
century,  and  died  some  time  before  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth.  He  was  an  Elizabethan 
dramatist,  a  friend  of  Dekker  and  Chapman  and 
Heywood.  He  was  an  odd  genius  who  created 
slowly  and  borrowed  a  great  deal.  He  was  not 
very  independent.  .  .  . 

It  is,  unimportantly,  true  that  fewer  "facts" 
than  truths  are  known  about  him.  We  are  luck- 
ily spared  the  exact  dates  of  his  uninteresting 
birth  and  death,  and  his  unmeaning  address  and 
family.  We  have  not  even  enough  to  serve  as 
a  frame-work  for  the  elaborate  structure  of 
"doubtless"  and  "We  may  picture  to  ourselves 
young  — "  that  stands  as  a  biography  of  Shake- 
speare and  others.  It  could,  of  course,  be  done 
by  throwing  our  knowledge  of  Elizabethan  con- 
ditions and  our  acquaintance  with  the  character 
of  the  author  of  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  together. 


86  JOHN  WEBSTER 

It  would  not  be  worth  it.  We  know  that  Web- 
ster was  a  member  of  the  Merchant  Tailors'  Com- 
pany, and  born  free  of  it.  There  is  a  late  legend 
that  he  was  clerk  of  St.  Andrew's,  Holborn.  At 
one  time  it  seemed  possible  to  identify  him  (con- 
temporary enemies  tried  to)  with  an  ex-army 
chaplain  who  wrote  fanatical  religious  tracts  and 
was  a  University  reformer,  in  the  middle  of  the 
seventeenth  century.  Superb  thought!  It  is 
hard  to  degenerate  nobly;  and  his  contempo- 
raries, after  reaching  their  summit,  went  down- 
hill (as  writers)  in  various  ways.  Some  became 
dropsical;  others  entered  the  Church;  others 
went  on  writing;  a  few  drank.  But  this,  this 
would  have  been  an  end  worthy  of  a  fantastic 
poet!  Alas!  Mr.  Dyce  investigated  too  thor- 
oughly, and  pretty  certainly  disproved  the  iden- 
tification. After  his  last  play,  Webster  slips 
from  us  inscrutably  round  the  corner.  He  may 
have  lived  on  for  years  and  years.  He  may  have 
died  directly.    It  does  not  matter  to  us. 

For  the  life  of  Webster  the  dramatist,  how- 
ever, as  opposed  to  Webster  the  private  man, 
we  have  a  few  facts.  He  comes  into  our  notice 
— fairly  young,  it  is  to  be  presumed — in  1602. 
He  was  then  very  busily  one  of  the  less  important 
of  a  band  of  hack  playwrights  employed  by 
Henslowe.    He  had  a  hand  in  several  plays  that 


JOHN  WEBSTER  87 

we  know  of  during  that  year :  Ccesar's  Fall,  Two 
Shapes,^  Christmas  comes  hut  once  a  year,  and  at 
least  one  part  of  Lady  Jane,  His  collaborators 
were  Munday,  Drayton,  Middleton,  Heywood, 
Chettle,  Smith,  and  Dekker.  It  was  the  begin- 
ning, as  far  as  we  know,  of  a  close  connection 
with  Dekker  and  a  long  one  with  Heywood. 
Webster  was  writing  for  both  Henslowe's  com- 
panies, Ccesar's  Fall  and  Two  Shapes  for  the 
Admiral's  men,  Christmas  comes  but  once 
a  year  and  Lady  Jane  for  Worcester's  men. 
Writing  for  Henslowe  was  not  the  best  school 
for  genius.  No  high  artistic  standard  was  ex- 
acted. It  rather  implies  poverty,  and  certainly 
means  scrappy  and  unserious  work.  It  may 
have  given  Webster — it  would  have  given  some 
people — a  sense  of  the  theatre.  But  he  emerged 
with  so  little  facility  in  writing,  and  so  little 
aptitude  for  a  good  plot  (in  the  ordinary  sense) , 
that  one  must  conclude  that  his  genius  was  not 
best  fitted  for  theatrical  expression,  into  which 
it  was  driven.  There  are  other  periods  and  liter- 
ary occupations  it  is  harder  to  imagine  him  in. 
But  I  can  figure  him  as  a  more  or  less  realistic 
novelist  of  the  present  or  the  last  eighty  years, 
preferably  from  Russia.     His  literary  skill,  his 

*  Perhaps  the  same  play.    See  Appendix  B. 


88  JOHN  WEBSTER 

amazing  genius  for  incorporating  fragments  of 
his  experience,  his  "bitter  flashes"  and  slow 
brooding  atmosphere  of  gloom,  would  have  been 
more  tremendous  untrammelled  by  dramatic 
needs.  His  power  of  imaginative  visualisation 
was  often  superfluous  in  a  play.  Like  most  of 
his  gifts  it  is  literary.  It  is  just  what  one  keenly 
misses  in  most  novels.  One  can  see,  almost  quote 
from,  a  rather  large  grey-brown  novel  by  John 
Webster,  a  book  full  of  darkly  suffering  human 
beings,  slightly  less  inexplicable  than  Dostoieff- 
sky's,  but  as  thrilling,  figures  glimpsed  by  sud- 
den flashes  that  tore  the  gloom  they  were  part 
of;  a  book  such  that  one  would  remember  the 
taste  of  the  whole  longer  than  any  incident  or 
character.  .  .  .  But  these  imaginations  are  fool- 
ish in  an  Heraclitan  world,  and  the  phrase  "John 
Webster  in  the  nineteenth  century"  has  no  mean- 
ing. 

Webster  seems  to  have  had  the  ordinary  train- 
ing, collaborating  in  classical  tragedy,  history, 
and  low  comedy.  None  of  his  collaborators  left 
much  mark  on  his  style.  He  was  more  sub- 
servient than  impressionable.  The  only  play 
of  this  lot  that  we  have  is  Lady  Jane,  printed 
in  a  cut  form  as  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt.  Webster 
probably  had  a  good  deal  to  do  with  two  Scenes, 


JOHN  WEBSTER  89 

2  and  16*/  he  may  be  responsible  for  more,  but, 
if  so,  it  is  indistinguishable.  The  whole  play  is 
a  ramshackle,  primitive  (for  1602),  ordinary 
affair.  The  parts  we  think  Webster's  are  rather 
different  from  the  rest,  but  no  better.  Metri- 
cally they  are  hopeless,  but  that  may  be  due  to 
the  state  of  the  play.  There  is  a  sort  of  sleepy 
imagination  in — 

"Lo,  we  ascend  into  our  chairs  of  state, 
Like  funeral  coffins^  in  some  funeral  pomp. 
Descending  to  their  graves  !" 

It  gratifies  one  with  a  feeling  of  fitness,  that 
Webster  should  have  been  thinking  of  funerals 
so  early  as  this.  Perhaps  one  is  sentimentally 
misled,  and  it  is  really  someone  else's  work.  The 
whole  thing  is  equally  uncertain  and  unimpor- 
tant. 

The  Induction  to  The  Malcontent  (1604), 
our  earliest  example  of  Webster's  unaided  writ- 
ing, is  a  slight  piece  of  work,  and  valueless.  The 
stiff  involved  sentences  are  characteristic.  The 
humour  is  commonplace.  It  all  shows  up  dully 
by  the  rest  of  the  play,  which  is  restive  and  in- 

^Sc.  2  is  from  p.  186,  col.  1,  "Enter  Guildford,"  to  p.  187, 
"  'cave.'    Exeunt." 

Sc.  16  is  from  p.  199,  end,  "Enter  Winchester,"  to  p.  201, 
"  'dumb.'    Exeunt," 


90  JOHN  WEBSTER 

flamed  with  the  vigorous,  queer,  vital,  biting  style 
of  Marston. 

Webster  seems  to  have  gone  on  in  the  profes- 
sion of  a  hack  author.  He  must  have  collab- 
orated in  dozens  of  plays  in  these  years,  perhaps 
written  some  of  his  own.  He  next  comes  to 
light  writing  two  comedies  of  London  life  with 
Dekker,  Westward  Ho  (1604)  and  Northward 
Ho  (1605) .  This  time  it  is  good  work  he  is  con- 
cerned with,  though  out  of  his  true  line.  They 
were  written  for  the  Children  of  Paul's.  Web- 
ster seems  to  have  been  a  free-lance  at  this  period, 
going  from  company  to  company.  But  he  must 
somehow  have  got  a  sort  of  reputation  by  this 
time,  to  be  joined  with  Dekker  in  this  friendly 
skirmish  against  Chapman,  Jonson,  and  Mar- 
ston {Eastward  Ho),  who  were  all  eminent. 
And  in  1607  it  seems  to  have  been  worth  a  pub- 
hsher's  while  to  put  his  and  Dekker's  names 
on  the  title-page  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt,  and 
leave  out  Chettle,  Smith,  and  Heywood.  In 
Westward  Ho  and  Northward  Ho  there  are  a 
few  scenes  I  think  we  can  be  pretty  certain  are 
mainly  Webster's;  Northward  Ho,  II.  2  and  V. 
1,  very  probably  Westward  Ho,  I.  1  and  III. 
3,  and  quite  probably  Northward  Ho,  I.  1  and 
III.  1.  One  seems  to  catch  a  sight  of  him  else- 
where in  the  plays;  but  it  is  difficult  to  be  cer- 


JOHN  WEBSTER  91 

tain.  In  the  scenes  we  attribute  to  him  the  sound 
^pf  a  deeper,  graver,  and  duller  voice  than  Dek- 
Jicr's  seems  to  be  heard.  It  is  not  altogether 
fancy.  The  lightness  goes.  The  bawdy  jokes 
change  their  complexion  a  little ;  they  come  more 
from  the  heart  and  less  from  the  pen.  The  peo- 
ple in  the  play  do  not  live  any  the  more  or  the 
less,  but  they  become  more  like  dead  men  and 
less  like  lively  dolls.  The  whole  thing  grows  less 
dramatic;  the  characters  become  self-consciously 
expository — Webster  w^as  always  old-fashioned 
in  this — instead  of  talking  to  each  other,  half- 
face  to  us,  they  turn  towards  the  audience  and 
stand  side  by  side,  addressing  it.  Justiniano's 
jealousy  grows  more  serious  and  real  when  Web- 
ster takes  charge  of  him,  more  unpleasantly  r^al 
to  himself,  and  fantastically  expressed.  And 
{Northward  Ho,  II.  2)  Mistress  Mayberry's 
sudden  disappearance  to  cry  stirs  you  with  an 
unexpected  little  stab  of  pathetic  reality  not  un- 
like the  emotion  the  later  Webster  can 
arouse  when  he  will.  But  the  whole  outlines  an 
atmosphere  of  the  plays,  and  the  characters  and 
incidents  are  far  nearer  Dekker  than  Webster. 
It  is  only  possible  to  say  either  that  Webster 
was  merely  assisting  Dekker  in  these  plays,  or 
that  his  peculiar  individuality  was  either  un- 
grown  or  dormant.    No  doubt  his  romantic  clas- 


92  JOHN  WEBSTER 

sical  ideas  made  him  feel  he  was  writing  very 
far  down  to  the  public.  But  he  need  not  have 
been  ashamed,  and  it  may  very  well  have  done 
him  good.  Good  farce  is  a  worthy  training  for 
a  tragic  writer;  and  these  plays  are  excellent 
comic  farce.  The  wit  is  not  subtle,  the  plots 
have  no  psychological  interest,  and  the  ragging 
of  Chapman  is  primitive.  But  the  characters 
have  a  wealth  of  vitality,  spirits,  and  comic  value. 
The  jokes  are  often  quite  good,  especially  the 
bawdy  ones,  and  the  sequence  of  events  keeps 
your  mind  lively  and  attentive.  The  general  at- 
mosphere in  these  two  plays  has  a  tang  of  de- 
lightful, coarse  gaiety,  like  a  country  smell  in 
March.  They  are  really  quite  good,  for  the 
rough  knock-about  stuff  they  are;  among  the 
best  in  their  kind,  and  that  no  bad  kind.  It 
would  be  amusing,  if  it  were  not  so  irritating, 
that  many  who  are  authorities  in  Elizabethan 
literature  are  violently  and  angrily  shocked  by 
these  two  plays,  and  condemn  them  as  filth. 
Dr.  Ward  throws  up  hands  of  outraged  refine- 
ment. Professor  Schelling  has  an  incredibly 
funny  passage.  "They  mark  the  depth  of  gross 
and  vicious  realism  to  which  the  comedy  of  man- 
ners descended.  .  .  .  Some  of  the  figures  we 
would  fain  believe,  in  their  pruriency  and  out- 
spoken uncleanhness  of  speech,  represent  an  oc- 


JOHN  WEBSTER  93 

casional  aberration,  if  not  an  outrageous  exag- 
geration, of  the  manners  of  the  time.  ...  In 
our  admiration  of  the  ideal  heights  at  times  at- 
tained by  the  hterature  of  the  great  age  of  Ehza- 
beth  we  are  apt  to  forget  that  the  very  amplitude 
of  its  vibrations  involves  an  extraordinary  range, 
and  that  we  must  expect  depths  and  morasses 
as  well  as  wholesome  and  bracing  moral  heights. 
.  .  ."  If  literary  criticism  crosses  Lethe,  and 
we  could  hear  the  comments  of  the  foul-mouthed 
ghosts  of  Shakespeare,  Marlowe,  and  Webster 
on  this  too  common  attitude,  their  outspoken  un- 
cleanliness  would  prostrate  Professor  Schelling 
and  his  friends.  Anger  at  this  impudent  attempt 
to  thrust  the  filthy  and  degraded  standards  of 
the  modern  middle-class  drawing-room  on  the 
clean  fineness  of  the  Elizabethans,  might  be  ir- 
relevant in  an  Essay  of  this  sort.  What  is 
relevant  is  a  protest  that  such  thin-lipped  writ- 
ers are  not  only  ridiculous  on  this  point,  but 
also,  for  all  their  learning  and  patience,  with- 
out sufficient  authority  in  Elizabethan  literature. 
It  is  impossible  to  trust  them.  Even  in  deciding 
a  date,  it  may  be  necessary  to  have  sympathy 
with  the  Elizabethans.  The  Elizabethans  liked 
obscenity;  and  the  primness  and  the  wickedness 
that  do  not  like  it,  have  no  business  with  them. 
There  is  a  silence  of  some  six  years  after 


94  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Northward  Ho,  We  do  not  know  what  Web- 
ster was  doing.  Somehow  he  was  gaining  posi- 
tion, and  preparing  himself.  In  1611  or  1612 
he  produced  The  White  Devil,  the  first  of  the 
two  plays  which  definitely  and  uniquely  give 
the  world  Webster.  Last  heard  of  he  was  a 
subordinate  collaborator;  now  he  is  a  great,  very 
individual  dramatist.  The  step  was  enormous; 
but  he  had  a  long  time  to  make  it  in.  If  Fate 
had  spared  us  some  of  his  interim  works,  we 
might  not  be  so  surprised. 

The  preface  to  The  White  Devil  is  important 
for  the  light  it  throws  both  on  Webster  and  on 
the  general  critical  ideas  of  the  period.  "Evi- 
demment,"  says  M.  Symmes,  "Webster  dans 
ce  passage  est  un  des  premiers  a  connaitre  Fim- 
portance,  le  merite,  et  I'individualite  du  theatre 
anglais  romantique,  comme  genre  separe."  ^  It 
is  too  strong.  But  he  does  seem  to  hover  in  a 
queer  way,  between  intense  pride  in  his  own 
work  and  fine  appreciation  of  the  best  among  his 
contemporaries,  and  scorn  of  all  these  in  com- 
parison to  a  "true  dramatic  poem"  in  the  clas- 
sical style.  He  shows  himself  wholly  of  the 
Jonson-Chapman  school  of  classicists,  in  agree- 
ment with  the  more  cultivated  critics.    His  gloom 

*  Symmes:     Les  Debuts  de  la  Critique  Dramatique  en  Angle- 
terre,  etc. 


JOHN  WEBSTER  95 

fires  up  at  the  imaginary  glories  of  these  Satur- 
nian  plays;  he  is  superb  in  his  scorn  of  his  own 
audience.  "Should  a  man  present  to  such  an 
auditory  the  most  sententious  tragedy  that  ever 
was  written,  observing  all  the  critical  laws,  as 
height  of  style,  and  gravity  of  person,  enrich  it 
with  the  sententious  Chorus,  and,  as  it  were,  life 
in  death  in  the  passionate  and  weighty  Nuntius ; 
..."  His  arrogance  was  partly  due,  no  doubt, 
to  pique  at  the  failure  of  the  play  and  partly 
to  the  literary  fashion.  But  it  had  something 
natural  to  him.  Even  in  these  plays  he  so 
scornfully  wrote  for  the  "uncapable  multi- 
tude" of  those  times  there  is  a  sort  of  classicism. 
His  temperament  was  far  too  romantic  for  it; 
he  was  not  apt  to  it,  like  Chapman.  Yet,  espe- 
cially in  The  White  Devil,  the  unceasing  coup- 
lets at  the  end  of  speeches,  both  in  their  number 
and  their  nature,  have  a  curious  archaic  effect. 
One  line  is  connected  with  the  situation,  and  ex- 
presses an  aspect  of  it;  the  next,  with  the  pat 
expected  rhyme,  goes  to  the  general  rule,  and 
turns  the  moral.  It  belonged  to  Webster's  ideal 
ntemperament  in  poetry  to  turn  readily  and  con- 
jftinually  to  the  greater  generalisations.  These 
last  lines  or  couplets  always  lead  out  on  to  them. 
They  went,  the  classicists,  with  a  kind  of  glee; 


96  JOHN  WEBSTER 

they  liked  to  be  in  touch  with  permanent  vague- 
nesses. 

Webster's  praise  of  his  contemporaries  is,  how- 
ever, very  discriminating.  The  order  he  gives 
them  is  instructive: — Chapman;  Jonson;  Beau- 
mont and  Fletcher;  Shakespeare,  Dekker,  and 
Heywood.  He  tells  us  in  this  preface,  what  we 
could  have  guessed,  that  he  wrote  very  slowly. 
It  was  natural,  as  he  compiled,  rather  than  com- 
posed, his  plays;  working  so  laboriously  from 
his  note-book.  He  may  be  imagined  following 
doggedly  behind  inspiration,  glooming  over  a 
situation  till  he  saw  the  heart  of  it  in  a  gesture 
or  a  phrase.  He  casts  the  sigh  of  the  confirmed 
constipate  at  Heywood  and  Dekker  and  Shake- 
speare for  their  "right  happy  and  copious  in- 
dustry." His  agonies  in  composition  are  amus- 
ingly described  in  a  passage  in  Fitzjeffry's  Notes 
irom  Blachfriars  (1620).' 

The  White  Devil  and  The  Duchess  of  Malfi 
rare  often  described  as  "revenge-plays,"  a  re- 
cently-invented genus.  Dr.  Stoll  deals  at  great 
length  with  them  in  this  light,  and  Professor 
Vaughan  devotes  two  or  three  pages  of  his  short 
essay  to  summing  up  the  history  of  the  type. 
There  is  something  in  the  idea,  but  not  much; 
and  it  has  been  over-worked.     To  begin  with, 

*  Given  in  Dyce's  1857  edition.     Introduction,  p.  xvi. 


JOHN  WEBSTER  97 

there  are  far  fewer  examples  of  this  type  than 
these  critics  believe.     And  it  is  not  quite  clear 
what  is  the  thread  of  continuity  they  are  thinking 
of.     Is  it  the  fact  that  revenge  is  the  motive  in 
each  play?    Or  is  it  a  special  type  of  play,  the 
criterion  of  which  is  its  atmosphere,  and  which 
generally  includes  vengeance  as  a  motive?     If 
the  second,  they  must  include  other  plays  in  their 
list;  if  the  first,  drop  some  out.     The  truth  is 
that  there  is  a  certain  type  of  play,  the  plot  of 
which  was  based  on  blood-for-blood  vendetta, 
and  the  atmosphere  of  which  had  a  peculiar  tinge. 
Kyd  started  it;  it  dropped  for  a  bit,  and  then 
Marston  revived  it,  rather  differently,  with  great 
foresight,  at  an  opportune  moment.     It  had  a 
brief    boom    with    Marston,    Shakespeare,    and 
Chettle.     The  atmosphere  became  indistinguish- 
able from  that  of  a  good  many  plays  of  the  pe- 
riod.    Tourneur  took  the  atmosphere,  and  dis- 
carded the  revenge-plot,  in  The  Atheist's  Trag- 
edy,    So  did  The  Second  Maiden's  Tragedy, 
Chapman  happened  to  take  the  revenge-motive, 
and  went  back  to  Seneca  on  his  own  account. 
He  gives  a  characteristic  account  of  the  meta- 
physics of  the  revenge-motive  in  the  Revenge  of 
Bussy,"-    Webster  used  it  a  little  in  one  of  two 
plays  that  in  other  ways  resemble  the  work  of 

» Chapman's  Tragedies,  ed.  Parrott,  pp.  131-2. 


98  JOHN  WEBSTER 

other  people  who  used  the  revenge-plot.  That 
is  all.  To  call  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  a  revenge- 
play  is  simply  ridiculous.  If  it  is  raked  in,  you 
must  include  Othello  and  a  dozen  more  as  well. 
The  whole  category  is  a  false  one.  It  would  be 
much  more  sensible  to  invent  and  trace  the 
"Trial-at-law"  type,  beginning  with  the  Eumen- 
ides,  going  down  through  The  Blerchant  of  Ven- 
ice, The  White  Devil,  Volpone,  The  Spanish 
Curate,  and  a  score  more,  till  you  ended  with 
Justice, 

The  White  Devil  and  The  Duchess  of  Malfi 
are  so  similar  in  atmosphere  that  it  is  sometimes 
difficult  for  the  moment  to  remember  in  which 
of  them  some  character  or  speech  occurs.  But 
it  is  convenient  to  consider  them  separately;  and 
to  take  The  White  Devil  first. 

The  story  is  simple.  Brachiano  conceives  a 
passion  for  Vittoria,  and  wins  her.  She  suggests, 
and  he  plans,  the  death  of  Camillo  and  Isabella. 
Their  love  is  discovered  by  Vittoria's  mother, 
Cornelia.  Isabella's  brothers,  Francisco  and 
Monticelso,  try  to  put  an  end  to  it,  by  giving  it 
rope  to  hang  itself.  Before  this  plan  can  take 
effect  the  murders  are  committed.  Francisco 
and  Monticelso  arraign  Vittoria  for  complicity 
in  the  murders  and  for  adultery.  She  is  con- 
demned to  imprisonment ;  but  Francisco,  to  bring 


JOHN  WEBSTER  99 

the  two  nearer  final  ruin,  plots  so  that  she  and 
Brachiano  escape  together  to  Padua  and  marry. 
Thither  he  follows  them,  with  some  friends,  in 
disguise;  and  accomplishes  their  deaths. 

Webster  did  not  handle  this  tale  very  skilfully, 
from  the  dramaturgic  point  of  view.  The  play 
is  almost  a  dramatised  narrative.  Occasionally 
the  clumsiness  of  his  hand  is  uncomfortably  mani- 
fest. Generally  it  does  not  matter,  for  his  virtues 
lie  in  a  different  aspect  of  plays  from  plot-mak- 
ing. The  motives  of  the  various  characters  are 
more  obscure  than  they  are  wont  to  be  in  Eliza- 
bethan plays.  On  the  whole  this  is  a  virtue;  or 
seems  to  be  to  the  modern  mind.  Characters  in 
a  play  gain  in  realism  and  a  mysterious  solem- 
nity, if  they  act  unexplainedly  on  instinct,  like 
people  in  real  life,  and  not  on  rational  and  pub- 
licly-stated grounds,  like  men  in  some  modern 
plays. 

The  play  begins  with  a  bang.  From  the  point 
of  view  of  the  plot  it  is  an  unusual  and  unhelpful 
beginning.  Count  Lodovico  (who  turns  out  later 
in  the  play  to  be  an  unsuccessful  lover  of  Isa- 
bella, and  who  becomes  the  chief  instrument  in 
the  downfall  of  Brachiano  and  Vittoria)  has  just 
been  branded.  He  enters  with  a  furious  shout. 
"Banished!"  In  this  scene  there  is  an  instance 
of  a  favourite  dramatic  trick  of  Webster's,  to 


100  JOHN  WEBSTER 

add  liveliness.  When  some  long  speech  has  to 
be  made,  where  Chapman  would  give  it  to  one 
person,  Webster  divides  it  between  two,  con- 
tinually alternating  with  a  few  lines  each.  It 
makes  the  scene  "go"  in  a  most  remarkable  man- 
ner. In  this  case  Gasparo  and  Antonelli  do  it 
to  Lodovico.  In  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  Ferdi- 
nand and  the  Cardinal  treat  the  Duchess  in  this 
way. 

The  next  scene  introduces  the  chief  characters 
and  the  chief  emotion.  This  fatal  love,  the  cause 
of  the  whole  tragedy,  enters  most  strikingly. 
Vittoria  leaves  the  stage,  Brachiano  turns,  with 
a  flaming  whisper,  to  Flamineo.  He  wastes  no 
words.  He  does  not  foolishly  tell  the  audience, 
"I  am  in  love  with  that  woman  who  has  just  gone 
off." 

Brachiano.     "Flamineo '* 


Flamineo.     "My  lord?" 
Brachiano.     "Quite  lost,  Flamineo." 

A 

Webster  thought  dramalicaHyr- 

Flamineo,  a  typicar"taave  of  Webster's,  fills 
the  next  few  pages  with  a  chorus  of  quotations 
from  Montaigne.  Dramatic  is  the  juxtaposition 
of  the  passionate  scene  between  Brachiano  and 
Vittoria,  broken  by  the  prophetic  Cornelia,  the 
baiting  of  Brachiano  by  the  Duke  and  the  Cardi- 


JOHN  WEBSTER  101 

nal,  and  the  pitiful  interview  of  Brachiano  and 
his  deserted  wife.  In  the  last  Webster  shews 
that  he  can  turn  to  more  untroubled  tragedy 
when  he  wants  to : 

"I  pray,  sir,  burst  my  heart;  and  in  my  death 
Turn  to  your  ancient  pity,  though  not  love." 

Rather  swiftly,  Vittoria  (perhaps)  and 
Brachiano,  certainly,  accomplish  the  murders; 
and  Vittoria  is  arrested  and  tried.  The  trial 
scene  is  prodigiously  spirited.  There  is  no  hero 
to  enhst  our  sympathy;  it  is  merely  a  contest 
between  various  unquenchable  wickednesses. 
The  rattle  of  rapid  question  and  answer,  sharp 
with  bitterness,  is  like  musketry.  Vittoria  is 
wicked;  but  her  enemies  are  wicked  and  mean. 
So  one  sides  with  her,  and  even  admires.  Her 
spirit  of  ceaseless  resistance  and  fury,  like  the 
wriggling  of  a  trapped  cat,  is  astonishing. 

"For  your  names 
Of  whore  and  murdress,  they  proceed  from  you. 
As  if  a  man  should  spit  against  the  wind ; 
The  filth  returns  in's  face." 

Flamineo's  subsequent  affectation  of  madness 
and  melancholy  is  made  too  much  of;  for  the 
purpose  of  amusing,  perhaps.  At  this  point  in 
the  play,  the  two  "villains"  part  company.    Fran- 


102  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Cisco  pursues  his  way  alone.  The  scene  between 
Brachiano,  in  his  groundless  jealousy,  and  Vit- 
toria,  is  tremendous  with  every  kind  of  beauty 
and  horror;  beginning  from  the  extraordinarily 
iin- Websterian : 

"How  long  have  I  beheld  the  devil  in  crystal! 
Thou  hast  led  me,  like  an  heathen  sacrifice. 
With  music  and  with  fatal  yokes  of  flowers. 
To  my  eternal  ruin.     Woman  to*  maiT^ 
Is  either  a  god  or.a^wolf."  ^^^ 

The  taming  of  the  wild  cat,  Vittoria,  is  shown 
with  wonderfully  precise  and  profound  psychol- 
ogy; and  all  made  horrible  by  the  ceaseless  and 
eager  prompting  of  Flamineo. 

"Fie,  fie,  my  lord! 
Women  are  caught  as  you  take  tortoises; 
She  must  be  turned  on  her  back." 

The  scene  of  the  election  of  the  Pope  is  an  ir- 
relevant ornament.  It  is  noteworthy  that  to 
some  extent  Webster  improved  in  dramatic  craft 
with  time.  The  Duchess  of  Malft  has  fewer  such 
scenes  than  The  White  DeviL 

The  last  part  of  the  play,  after  it  removes  to 
Padua,  is  one  long  study  of  the  horror  of  death. 
It  takes  it  from  every  point  of  view.  There  is 
the  pathetic  incomprehension  of  Cornelia  over 
young  Marcello.     "Alas!  he  is  not  dead;  he  is 


JOHN  WEBSTER  103 

in  a  trance.  Why,  here's  nobody  shall  get  any- 
thing by  his  death.  Let  me  call  him  again  for 
God's  sake." 

There  is  the  difficulty  and  struggle  of  the  death 
of  so  intensely  live  a  man  as  Brachiano: 

"Oh,  thou  strong  heart! 
There's  such  a  covenant  'tween  the  world  and  it. 
They're  loath  to  break." 

There  is  the  grotesque  parody  of  death,  in 
Flamineo's 

"Oh  I  smell  soot, 
Most  stinking  soot !     The  chimney  is  afire.  .  .  . 
There's  a  plumber  laying  pipes  in  my  guts,  it  scalds." 

There  is  the  superbness  of  Vittoria's  courage; 

"Yes  I  shall  welcome  death 
As  princes  do  some  great  ambassadors ; 
I'll  meet  thy  weapon  half-way-" 

There  are  the  "black  storm"  and  the  "mist" 
which  drive  around  Vittoria  and  Flamineo  in  the 
last  moments  of  all. 

The  Duchess  of  Malfi  is  on  the  whole  a  better 
play  than  The  White  Devil.  It  does  not  have 
more  of  Webster's  supreme  dramatic  moments, 
but  the  language  is  more  rich  and  variously  mov- 
ing— in  a  dramatic,  not  merely  a  literary  way. 


l< 


JOHN  WEBSTER 


It  is,  even  more  than  The  White  Devil,  in  the 
first  half  a  mere  simple  narrative  of  events,  lead- 
ing up  to  a  long-continued  and  various  hell  in 
j  the  second  part.  It  is  often  discussed  if  the  plots 
of  The  White  Devil  and  The  Duchess  of  Malfi 
are  weak.  Webster's  method  does  not  really 
take  cognisance  of  a  plot  in  the  ordinary  sense 
of  the  word.  He  is  too  atmospheric.  It  is  like 
enquiring  if  there  is  bad  drawing  in  a  nocturne 
of  Whistler's. 

The  Duchess  of  JVIalfi  is  a  young  widow,  for- 
bidden by  her  brothers,  Ferdinand  and  the  Car- 
dinal, to  marry  again.  They  put  a  creature  of 
theirs,  Bosola,  into  her  service  as  a  spy.  The 
Duchess  loves  and  secretly  marries  her  steward, 
Antonio,  and  has  three  children.  Bosola  ulti- 
mately discovers  and  reports  this.  Antonio  and 
the  Duchess  have  to  fly.  The  Duchess  is  cap- 
tured, imprisoned,  and  mentally  tortured  and 
put  to  death.  Ferdinand  goes  mad.  In  the  last 
Act  he,  the  Cardinal,  Antonio,  and  Bosola  are 
/  all  killed  with  various  confusions  and  in  various 
horror. 

The  play  begins  more  slowly  than  The  White 
Devil,  Bosola  appears  near  the  beginning,  and 
plays  throughout  a  part  like  that  of  Flamineo. 
The  great  scene  in  the  first  Act  is  the  scene 
of  the  Duchess's  proposal  to  Antonio.    It  is  full  ^ 


JOHN  WEBSTER  105 

of  that  perfect,  tender  beauty  which  the  stormy 
Webster  could  evoke  when  he  liked;  from  the 
Duchess's  preliminary  farewell  to  her  maid, 

"Good  dear  soul, 

Wish  me  good  speed; 
For  I  am  going  into  a  wilderness 
Where  I  shall  find  nor  path  nor  friendly  clue 
To  be  my  guide." 

to  the  maid's  concluding  comment: 

"Whether  the  spirit  of  greatness  or  of  women 
Reign  most  in  her,  I  know  not;  but  it  shows 
A  fearful  madness :  I  owe  her  much  of  pity."     .^ 
-^^yJ     '     ,     /  ^  ■  .     '  '    •      '   -^;  -'---^•^-  • 

There  is  rather  hideous  and  very  typical  trag- 
edy in  the  scene  of  Bosola's  device  to  discover 
the  Duchess's  secret.  The  meeting  of  Bosola  and 
Antonio,  at  midnight,  after  the  birth  of  the  child, 
is  full  of  dramatic  power  and  of  breathless  sus- 
pense that  worthily  recalls  Macbeth, 

Ant.  "Bosola!  .  .  . 

heard  you  not 
A  noise  even  now? 
Bos.  From  whence  ? 
Ant.  From  the  Duchess's  lodging. 
Bos.  Not  I :  did  you  ? 
Ant.  I  did,  or  else  I  dreamed. 
Bos.  Let's  walk  towards  it. 
Ant.  No:  it  may  be  'twas 

But  the  rising  of  the  wind. 
Bos.  Very  likely.  .  .  ." 


106  JOHN  WEBSTER 

When  the  news  is  brought  to  the  brothers  that 
the  Duchess  has  had  a  child,  their  anger  is  hide- 
ous and,  as  with  passionate  people,  too  imagina- 
tive. 

After  this,  and  before  the  events  which  lead 
to  the  catastrophe,  that  is,  between  the  second 
and  third  Acts,  there  is  a  long  and  somewhat 
clumsy  interval.  This  was  rather  in  the  dra- 
matic fashion  of  the  time.  Ferdinand's  discovery 
of  the  Duchess's  guilt  breaks  finely  across  a 
lovely  scene  of  domestic  merriment.  The  plot 
unravels  swiftly.  The  final  parting  of  the  Duch- 
ess and  Antonio  is  full  of  a  remarkable  quiet 
beauty  of  phrase  and  poetry.  It  is  a  mere  acci- 
dent that  we  have  discovered  that  it  is  entirely 
composed  of  fragments  of,  and  adaptations  from, 
Sidney,  Donne,  Ben  Jonson,  and  others.  The 
scenes  of  the  various  tortures  of  the  Duchess 
form  an  immense  and  not  always  successful  sym- 
phony of  gloom,  horror,  madness,  and  death.  It 
is  only  redeemed  by  the  fact  that  the  Duchess  can 
never  be  quite  broken: 

j/^  "I  am  Duchess  of  Malii  still." 

Only  once,  just  before  death,  does  she  let  an 
hysterical  cry  escape  her: 

"any  way,  for  Heaven's  sake. 
So  I  were  out  of  your  whispering." 


JOHN  WEBSTER  107 

,  The  superhuman  death  of  the  Duchess  is  finely 
anti-climaxed  by  the  too  human  death  of  Cariola, 

[who  fights,  kicks,  j)rays,  and  lies. 
"  After  the  death  of  the  Duchess,  there  is  a 
slight  lull  before  the  rest  of  the  tragedy  rises 
again  to  its  climax.  It  contains  a  queer  scene  of 
macabre  comedy  where  Ferdinand  beats  his  fan- 
tastic doctor,  and  a  curious,  rather  Gothic,  ex- 
jtraneous  scene  of  quietness,  where  Antonio  talks 
to  the  echo.  The  end  is  a  maze  of  death  and 
madness.  Webster's  supreme  gift  is  the  blind- 
ing revelation  of  some  intense  state  of  mind  at 
a  crisis,  by  some  God-given  phrase.  All  the  last 
half  of  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  is  full  of  them. 
The  mad  Ferdinand,  stealing  across  the  stage  in 
the  dark,  whispering  to  himself,  with  the  dev- 
astating impersonality  of  the  madman,  "Stran- 
gling is  a  very  quiet  death,"  is  a  figure  one  may 
not  forget.  And  so  in  the  next  scene,  the  too 
sane  Cardinal: — 


"How  tedious  is  a  guilty  conscience! 
When  I  look  into  the  fish-ponds  in  my  garden 
'/Methinks  I  see  a  thing  armed  with  a  rake 
That  seems  to  strike  at  me." 


It  is  one  of  those  pieces  of  imagination  one  can- 
not explain,  only  admire. 

But  it  is,  of  course,  in  or  near  the  moment 


108  JOHN  WEBSTER 

of  death  that  Webster  is  most  triumphant.    He 

•^  adopts  the  romantic  convention,  that  men  are, 

\  in  the  second  of  death,  most  essentially  and  sig- 

\  "nificantly  themselves.     In  the  earher  play  the 

whole  angry,  sickening  fear  of  death  that  a  man 

feels  who  has  feared  nothing  else,  lies  in  those 

terrific  words  of  Brachiano's  when  it  comes  home 

to  him  that  he  is  fatally  poisoned: — 

"On  pain  of  death,  let  no  man  name  death  to  me: 
It  is  a  word  infinitely  terrible." 

Webster  knows  all  the  ways  of  approaching 
death.  Flamineo,  with  the  strange  carelessness 
of  the  dying  man,  grows  suddenly  noble.  "What 
dost  think  on?"  his  murderer  asks  him. 

Flamineo.     "Nothing;     of     nothing;     leave     thy     idle 
questions. 
I  am  i'  the  way  to  study  a  long  silence: 
To  prate  were  idle.    I  remember  nothing. 
There's  nothing  of  so  infinite  vexation 
As  man's  own  thoughts." 

And  Webster,  more  than  any  man  in  the  world, 
has  caught  the  soul  just  in  the  second  of  its 
decomposition  in  death,  when  knowledge  seems 
transcended,  and  the  darkness  closes  in,  and 
boundaries  fall  away. 

"My  soul,"  cries  Vittoria,  "like  to  a  ship  in  a  black  storm, 
Is  driven,  I  know  not  whither." 


JOHN  WEBSTER  109 

And  Flamineo — 

"While  we  look  up  to  Heaven  we  confound 
Knowledge  with  knowledge,  O,  I  am  in  a  mist." 

So  in  this  play  Ferdinand  "seems  to  come  to 
himself,"  as  Bosola  says,  "now  he's  so  near  the 
bottom."  He  is  still  half-mad;  but  something 
of  the  old  overweening  claim  on  the  universe 
fires  up  in  the  demented  brain : 

"Give  me  some  wet  hay :   I  am  broken-minded. 
I  do  account  this  world  but  a  dog-kennel: 
I  will  vault  credit  and  affect  high  pleasures 
,      Beyond  death." 

For  some  six  years  again,  after  The  Duchess 
of  Malfi,  we  know  nothing  of  Webster's  activi- 
ties. When  he  comes  once  more  into  sight  in 
The  Devil's  Law-Case  (1620)  he  has  shared  the 
fate  of  the  whole  drama.  It  is  an  attempt  to 
write  in  the  Massinger-Fletcher  genus  of  tragi- 
comedy. The  plot  is  of  so  complicated  a  nature 
that  it  would  take  almost  the  space  of  the  whole 
play  to  set  it  out  fully.  Indeed  there  is  scarcely 
a  plot  at  all,  but  a  succession  of  plots,  interwoven, 
and  each  used,  in  the  debased  way  of  that  period, 
almost  only  to  produce  some  ingeniously  start- 
ling scene,  some  theatrical  paradox.  It  was, 
probably,  Fletcher  who  was  responsible  for  this 


no  JOHN  WEBSTER 

love  of  a  succession  of  dramatic  shocks.    It  suited 
a  part  of  Webster's  taste  only  too  well. 

The  main  incident  of  the  play  is  a  malicious 
suit  brought  by  a  mother,  Leonora,  against  her 
son,  Romelio,  trying  to  dispossess  him  on  the 
(false)  ground  of  bastardy.  Tacked  on  to  that 
are  various  minor  affairs,  a  duel  between  friends 
in  which  both  are  supposed  to  have  been  killed 
and  both  marvellously  survive,  a  virgin  pretend- 
ing to  be  with  child,  a  sick  man  miraculously 
cured  by  an  assassin's  unintentionally  medicinal 
knife,  and  so  on.  The  most  central  incident  may 
have  been  suggested  to  Webster  by  an  old  play, 
Lusfs  Dominion;  the  cure  he  got  from  a  transla- 
tion of  some  French  yarns.  But  the  question 
of  his  originality  is  unimportant.  All  his  inci- 
dents aim  at  that  cheap  fantasticality  which 
marked  this  Jacobean  drama.  And  his  topics 
are  its  well-rubbed  coins,  romantic  friendship, 
sudden  "passion,"  virginity,  duelling,  seduction. 
A  most  dully  debonair  world.  However,  he 
could  not  handle  them  w4th  the  same  touch. 
Webster  stepped  the  same  measures  as  his  con- 
temporaries, willingly  enough — conceitedly  even, 
as  his  dedication  and  preface  show;  but  with 
earlier  legs.  His  characters  alternate  between 
being  the  sometimes  charming  lay-figures  of  the 
time,  and  wakening  to  the  boisterous  liveliness 


JOHN  WEBSTER  111 

of  fifteen  years  before.  Several  scenes  are  very 
noticeably  Jonsonian  interludes  of  farce,  sand- 
wiched between  comedy.  The  vigorous  flow  of 
Act  II,  Scene  1  (pages  114-116)  is  wholly  remi- 
niscent of  the  comedy  of  humours.  This  is  part- 
ly due  to  the  purely  satiric  character  of  some  of 
the  passages.  The  dramatists  of  the  beginning 
of  the  century  loved  to  play  Juvenal.  They 
would  still  be  railing.  Webster  was  especially 
prone  to  it.  Repeatedly,  in  The  DeviVs  Law- 
Case,  this  habit  of  abuse,  directed  against  one 
person  or  the  world,  recalls  Webster's  two  great 
plays.  There  are  a  score  of  passages  where  you 
immediately  cry  "Webster!"  the  note  is  so  indi- 
vidual. And  they  are  mostly  of  this  satiric  kind. 
Who  else  could  have  written  (I.  1)  : 

"With  what  a  compell'd  face  a  woman  sits 
While  she  is  drawing !     I  have  noted  divers, 
Either  to  feign  smiles,  or  suck  in  the  lips, 
To  have  a  little  mouth;  ruffle  the  cheeks 
To  have  the  dimple  seen;  and  so  disorder 
The  face  with  affectation,  at  next  sitting 
It  has  not  been  the  same :  .  .  ." 

The  "I  have  noted"  of  the  professional  satirist 
is  unmistakeable. 

But,  indeed,  the  essence  of  Webster  pervades 
this  "tragi-comedy."  And  the  result  is  that  it 
is  as  far  diiFerent  from  other  tragi-comedies  in 


112  JOHN  WEBSTER 

its  spirit,  as  Measure  for  Measure  is  from  the 
comedies  among  which  it  is  numbered.  His  vo- 
cabulary and  peculiar  use  of  words  peep  out 
on  every  page;  "passionately,"  "infinitely," 
"screech-owl,"  "a  lordship,"  "caroche,"  "mathe- 
matical," "dung-hill,"  "foul"  a  hundred  times; 
and  all  in  sentences  that  have  the  very  run  of  his 
accents.  There  are  scores  of  short  passages. 
Webster's  characters  have  the  trick  of  comment- 
ing on  themselves  when  they  are  jesting.  "You 
see,  my  lord,  we  are  merry,"  cries  Romelio  (p. 
Ill),  and  so  Sanitonella  (p.  114),  "I  am  merry." 
The  Duchess  inevitably  comes  to  one's  mind,  in 
that  happy  moment  before  her  world  crumbled 
about  her,  "I  prithee,  when  were  we  so  merry?" 
It  is  a  trick  that  makes  the  transience  or  the  un- 
reality of  their  merriment  stand  out  against  the 
normal  and  real  gloom.  Continually  in  this  play, 
as  in  the  others,  Webster  is  referring  to  women 
painting  their  faces.  The  subject  had  a  queer 
fascination  for  him.  Those  other,  more  obvious, 
I  thoughts  of  his  reappear,  too ;  his  broodings  on 
vdeath  and  gi^aves.  There  is  the  same  savagery 
in  his  mirth : 

"But  do  you  not  think" 

says  Jolenta,  suddenly,  when  she  has  acceded  to 
Romelio's  horrible  plannings, 


JOHN  WEBSTER  113 

"I  shall  have  a  horrible  strong  breath  now?" 
RoMELio.   "Why?" 

JoLENTA.   "O,  with  keeping  your  counsel^  'tis  so  terrible 
foul." 

"Bitter  flashes"  Romelio  rightly  calls  such  out- 
bursts. But  he  himself  achieves  wit  most  suc- 
cessfully in  the  same  mood  and  manner.  When 
the  Capuchin  worries  him,  before  his  duel,  about 
religion,  he,  "very  melancholy,"  retorts  with  a 
question  about  swords — 

"These  things,  you  know,"  the  Capuchin  re- 
plies, "are  out  of  my  practice." 

"But  these  are  things,  you  know, 
I  must  practise  with  to-morrow." 

Romelio  sardonically  returns.  It  is  very  clear 
throughout  that  the  bitterer  Webster's  flashes 
are,  the  brighter.  And  in  a  similar  way  he  livens 
up  when  he  approaches  any  emotion  such  as 
Jolenta  describes,  in  herself,  as  "fantastical  sor- 
row." It  is  the  fantastical  in  emotion  or  char- 
acter that  inspires  him,  while  the  fantastical  in 
situation  leaves  him  comparatively  cold.  He  es- 
says the  latter,  dutifully — the  usual  intellectual 
paradoxes  and  morbid  conventions  of  impossible 
psychology  which  this  kind  of  drama  demanded. 
In  that  typically-set  Websterian  scene  (Act  III. 
Scene  3 — A  table  set  forth  with  two  tapers,  a 


114  JOHN  WEBSTER 

death's-head,  a  book.)  between  Romelio  and  Jo- 
lenta,  love,  hate,  passion,  anger,  and  grief  play 
General  Post  with  all  the  unnatural  speed  the 
Jacobeans  loved.  He  has  even  invested  the  starts 
and  turns  of  the  trial-scene  with  a  good  deal  of 
interest  and  much  dramatic  power.  But  the  an- 
guish that  apes  mirth  and  the  mirth  that  toys 
with  pain  wake  his  genius.  He  even  laughs  at 
himself.  You  feel  an  almost  personal  resentment 
at  being  sold,  towards  the  end  of  the  play.  Ro- 
melio's  sullen  but  impressive  stoicism  is  broken 
by  Leonora's  entrance  with  coffins  and  winding- 
sheets  and  that  incomparable  dirge. 

**.  .  .  Courts  adieu,  and  all  delights. 
All  bewitching  appetites ! 
Sweetest  breath  and  clearest  eye. 
Like  perfumes,  go  out  and  die; 
And  consequently  this  is  done 
As  shadows  wait  upon  the  sun. 
Vain  the  ambition  of  kings, 
Who  seek  by  trophies  and  dead  things 
To  leave  a  living  name  behind. 
And  weave  but  nets  to  catch  the  wind/* 

Romelio,  like  any  reader,  is  caught  by  the  ut- 
ter beauty  of  this.  He  melts  in  repentance,  per- 
suades his  mother,  and  then  the  priest,  to  enter 
the  closet,  and  then — locks  them  in  with  entire 
callousness  and  a  dirty  jest,  and  goes  off  to  his 
duel.    It  is,  literally,  shocking.    But  Romelio  is 


JOHN  WEBSTER  115 

one  of  the  two  or  three  characters  into  whom 
Webster  has  breathed  a  spasmodic  life  and  force. 
The  ordinary  dolls  of  the  drama,  like  Contarino 
and  Ercole,  remain  dolls  in  his  hands.  But  the 
lust  and  grief  of  Leonora  have  some  semblance 
of  motion,  the  suffering  of  Jolenta  has  an  hys- 
terical truth,  and  the  figure  of  Romelio  lives 
sometimes  with  the  vitality  of  an  intruder  from 
another  world.  He  comes  out  of  the  earlier 
drama.  He  is  largely  the  sort  of  monster  Ben 
Jonson  or  Marlowe,  or  Kyd  or  Tourneur,  or  tl^  , 
earlier  Webster  likes  to  picture,  malign,  immoral, 
grotesque,  and  hideously  alive.  Winifred  also 
is  older  than  1620.  She  has  an  unpleasant  vi- 
vacity, a  rank  itch  of  vulgarity,  as  well  as  the 
office  of  commentator,  which  reminds  one  of 
characters  in  Webster's  two  great  plays.  She 
is  aJBosola  in  skirts.  A  sure  sign,  she  grows 
more  excited  when  love-making  is  to  hand.  It  _ 
is  typical  of  Webster  that  he  should  smirch  with  ^ 
his  especial  rankness,  not  only  the  baser  char- 
acters of  this  play,  but  the  love-making  between 
his  hero  and  heroine,  as  he  does  through  Wini-  / 
fred's  mouth  in  the  second  scene  of  the  play.  ^  J 
Like  any  Flamineo,  she  interprets  between  us 
and  the  puppets'  dallying,  a  little  disgustingly: 

''O  sweet-breath'd  monkeys^  how  they  grow  together !"  . . . 


116  JOHN  WEBSTER 

A  few  incidents  stand  out,  marked  by  the 
darker  range  of  colours  of  the  earlier  drama. 
Contarino's  groan  that  announces  that  he  is  not 
dead  (III.  2): 

Con.     "Or 

First  Surgeon.     "Did  he  not  groan?" 

Second  Surgeon.     "Is  the  wind  in  that  door  still?'* 

has  something  of  the  terror  and  abrupt  ghostli- 
ness  of  the  midnight  scene  in  The  Duchess  of 
Malfi  (II.  3),  or  Macbeth,  or  Jonson's  additions 
to  The  Spanish  Tragedy.  And  Leonora's  mad 
flinging  herself  on  the  ground  in  III.  3,  and  ly- 
ing there,  is  an  old  trick  that  the  early  Eliza- 
bethan audiences  almost  demanded  as  an  essen- 
tial of  Tragedy.  It  goes  back  through  Ferdi- 
nand, Bussy,  and  Marston's  heroes,  to  old  Hier- 
onimo  herself. 

Webster's  note-book  is  perhaps  a  little  less 
apparent  in  this  play  than  in  the  two  previous. 
But  there  are  a  good  many  passages  we  can  iden- 
tify, and  a  lot  more  we  can  suspect.  He  had 
fewer  "meditations"  of  the  old  railing  order  to 
compile  from  his  pages  of  aphorisms  and  modern 
instances.  But  we  find  repetitions  from  A  Mon- 
umental Column,  The  White  Devil,  and  espe- 
cially The  Duchess  of  Malfi;  and  Ben  Jonson 
and  Sidney  have  found  their  way  through  the 


JOHN  WEBSTER  117 

note-book  into  these  pages.  He  still  employs 
soliloquy  and  the  concluding  couplet  to  an  extent 
and  in  a  way  that  seem  queer  in  a  play  of  this 
period.  But  he  seems  to  have  become  a  little 
more  sensible  to  violent  incongruity.  He  never 
offends  so  harshly  as  he  had  used.  Occasionally 
still,  the  stage-machinery  creaks  loudly  enough 
to  disturb  the  theatrical  illusion  rather  unpleas- 
antly. Sanitonella  is  a  little  abrupt  and  blunt 
in  exacting  information  from  Crispiano  for  our 
benefit: — "But,  pray,  sir,  resolve  me,  what  should 
be  the  reason  that  you  .  .  ."etc.  (II.  1).  And 
Romelio's  asides  are  occasionally  rather  too  obvi- 
ous. In  III.  3,  when  his  various  proposals  to 
Jolenta  have  been  ineffectual,  he  is  non-plussed ; 
but  only  for  a  second: 

RoMELio  (aside)  *'This  will  not  do. 

The  devil  has  on  the  sudden  furnished  me 
With  a  rare  charm^  yet  a  most  unnatural 
Falsehood:   no  matter,  so  'twill  take. — " 

But  at  the  end,  when  everybody  reveals  who  he 
is,  and  begins  explaining  everything  that  has  hap- 
pened, the  tedium  of  these  disentanglings  is  cut, 
and  the  apparently  inevitable  boredom  dodged, 
by  a  device  that  is  so  audacious  in  its  simplicity 
as  to  demand  admiration.  Leonora,  who  has  ap- 
parently made  good  use  of  her  imprisonment 


118  JOHN  WEBSTER 

in  the  closet  to  jot  down  a  jorecis  of  all  the  plots 
in  the  play,  interrupts  the  growing  flood  of  ex- 
planations with 

"Cease  here  all  further  scrutiny.     This  paper 
Shall  give  unto  the  court  each  circumstance 
Of  all  these  passages !" 

One  is  too  relieved  to  object. 

Metrically  this  play  is  very  similar  to  its  two 
forerunners;  though  here,  as  in  the  handling, 
Webster  seems  a  little  quieter.  He  is  unaffected 
by  the  Fletcher  influence  in  metre.  The  run  of 
his  lines  is  still  elusive  and  without  any  marked 
melody,  except  in  one  or  two  passages.  The  be- 
ginning lines  with  w  w  _  the  continual  shift- 
ing and  sliding  of  accent,  and  the  jerky  effect 
of  conversation,  continue.  It  was  always  a  blank 
verse  for  talking  rather  than  reading.  One  trick 
Webster  seems  to  have  developed  further,  the  fill- 
ing out  of  feet  with  almost  inadequate  syllables. 
Twice  in  the  first  five  pages  "marriage"  is  a 
trisyllable.  ^'Emotion"  fills  two  feet;  and  so  on. 
This  habit,  common  between  1580  and  1595,  was 
revived  by  some  writers  j^fter  1615.  It  fits  in 
very  queerly  with  that  opposite  tendency  to  the 
use  of  trisyllabic  feet  that  Webster  greatly  in- 
dulged in.  Sometimes  the  combination  is  rather 
piquant.     But  "marriage"  is,  perhaps,  a  symp- 


JOHN  WEBSTER  119 

torn  of  an  increased  steadiness  and  mastery  of 
rhythm.  There  are  two  or  three  passages  where 
his  blank  verse  is  abler  and  better,  in  considerable 
periods,  not  in  short  fragments  and  exclamations, 
than  it  had  been  before.  And  this  is  accompa- 
nied by  a  greater  evenness.  Leonora's  great 
speech  (III.  3)  begins  with  something  of  the 
old  ripple:  but  it  dies  away: 

".  .  .  Is  he  gone  then? 
There  is  no  plague  i'  the  world  can  be  compared 
To  impossible  desire;  for  they  are  plagu'd 
In  the  desire  itself.  .  .  . 

O,  I  shall  run  mad! 
For  as  we  love  our  youngest  children  best. 
So  the  last  fruit  of  our  affection, 
Where-ever  we  bestow  it,  is  most  strong. 
Most  violent,  most  unresistable. 
Since  'tis  indeed  our  latest  harvest-home. 
Last  merriment  'fore  winter.  .  .  ." 

The  beauty  and  pathos  of  these  hues,  the  com- 
plete and  masterful  welding  of  music  and  mean- 
ing, show  what  fineness  is  in  The  DeviVs  Law- 
Case,  One  could  quote  many  other  things  as 
noble,  or  as  admirable,  from  Romelio's  glorious 

**I  cannot  set  myself  so  many  fathom 
Beneath  the  height  of  my  true  heart,  as  fear," 

or  the  sagacious  and  horrid  rightness  of  his 


120  JOHN  WEBSTER 

"doves  never  couple  without 
A  kind  of  murmur/' 

to  Jolenta's  cry, 

"O,  if  there  be  another  world  i'  the  moon 
As  some  fantastics  dream.  .  .  ." 

Yet  the  play  is  not  a  good  play.  These  good 
bits  illuminate,  for  the  most  part,  nothing  but 
themselves,  and  have  only  a  literary  value.  A 
good  play  must  leave  an  increasing  impression 
of  beauty  or  terror  or  mirth  upon  the  mind, 
heaping  its  effect  continually  with  a  thousand 
trifles.  This  does  not  so.  It  is  a  play  without 
wholeness.  Its  merits  are  occasional  and  acci- 
dental. If  you  read  closely,  there  is  the  ex- 
traordinary personality  of  Webster  plain  enough 
over  and  in  it  all.  But  he  was  working  in  an 
uncongenial  medium.  It  is  a  supreme  instance 
of  the  importance  of  the  right  form  to  the  artist. 
The  Fletcher-Massinger  "tragi-comedy"  was 
the  product  of  an  age  and  temper  as  unsuitable 
to  Webster  as  the  tragedy  of  blood  and  dirt  had 
been  suitable.  The  Devil's  Law-Case  is  not  even 
a  fine  failure,  as,  for  instance,  Timon  of  Athens 
is.  In  the  first  place  a  tragi-comedy  is  not  a 
thing  to  make  a  fine  failure  of.  And  in  the  sec- 
ond place  Webster's  nature  and  methods  de- 
manded success  in  a  right  form,  or  nothing.    He 


JOHN  WEBSTER  121 

had  to  suffuse  the  play  with  himself.  He  was 
not  great  enough  and  romantic  enough  to  con- 
fer immortality  upon  fragments.  His  bitter 
flashes  required  the  background  of  thunderous 
darkness  to  show  them  up ;  against  this  grey  day- 
light they  are  ineffectual. 

Beyond  the  uninteresting  and  unimportant  A 
Monumental  Column  (1613),  which  only  shows 
how  naturally  Webster  turned  to  the  imitation 
of  Donne  when  he  turned  to  poetry,  the  uncer- 
tain and  featureless  Monuments  of  Honour,  and 
a  few  rather  perfunctory  verses  of  commenda- 
tion, we  have  nothing  more  of  Webster's  except 
A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold,  This  must  have  been 
written  shortly  after  The  Devil's  Law-Case,  It 
is  almost  entirely  unimportant  for  throwing  light 
on  the  real  Webster.  All  we  know  is  that  he 
had  something  to  do  with  the  play;  how  much 
or  little  it  is  impossible  to  tell  from  reading  it. 
He  may  be  responsible  for  the  whole  of  the  main 
plot.  That  it  is  not  so  obscure  and  unmotivated 
as  has  sometimes  been  supposed,  I  have  shown 
in  an  Appendix ;  but  it  is  not  good.  Parts  have  a 
slight,  unreal,  charm  for  those  who  are  interested 
in  antiquities.  The  way  in  which  in  IV.  3  (p. 
310)   Lessingham  suddenly  sulks,  and  goes  off 


122  JOHN  WEBSTER 

to  make  mischief,  in  order  to  spin  the  play  out 
for  another  act  and  a  bit,  is  childish. 

It  is  a  pity  we  cannot  barter  with  oblivion  and 
give  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  for  Ford  and  Web- 
ster's lost  murder  play.  This  was  one  of  the 
last,  and  it  must  have  been  one  of  the  best,  of 
the  Elizabethan  domestic  tragedies.  What  a 
superb  combination.  Ford  and  Webster!  And 
on  such  a  subject!  It  may  have  been  again,  after 
all  those  years,  the  last  cry  of  the  true  voice  of 
Elizabethan  drama.  Once,  in  1624,  there  was, 
perhaps,  a  tragedy  of  blood,  not  of  sawdust. 
It  is  beyond  our  reach. 


Chapter  V 

SOME  CHARACTERISTICS  OF 
WEBSTER 

It  happens,  with  some  writers,  that  when  you 
come  to  examine  their  less-known  works,  your 
idea  of  them  suffers  considerable  change,  and 
you  realise  that  the  common  conception  of  them 
is  incomplete,  distorted,  or  even  entirely  wrong. 
This  is  not  the  case  with  Webster.  He  is  known 
to  everyone  by  two  plays — The  Duchess  of  Malfi 
and  The  White  Devil  The  most  diligent  study 
of  the  rest  of  his  authentic  works  will  scarcely 
add  anything  of  value  to  that  knowledge  of  him. 
jHe  is  a  remarkable  dramatist,  with  an  unusually 
[individual  style  and  emotional  view  of  the  world. 
What  "Webster,"  the  literary  personality,  means 
to  us,  its  precise  character,  and  its  importance, 
can  be  discovered  and  explained  from  these  two 
plays.  So  I  shall  chiefly  consider  and  quote  them, 
with  an  occasional  sidelight  from  The  Devil's 
Law-Case. 

It  is  one  task  of  a  critic,  no  doubt,  to  communi- 
cate exactly  his  emotions  at  what  he  is  criticising, 

123 


124  JOHN  WEBSTER 

to  express  and  define  the  precise  savour.  But  it 
is  not  a  thing  one  can  go  on  at  for  long.  Hav- 
ing tried  to  hint  once  or  twice  what  "Webster" 
precisely  is,  I  had  better  analyse  various  aspects 
of  him,  and  not  tiresomely,  like  some  political 
speaker,  seek  about  for  a  great  many  ways  of 
saying  the  same  thing.  And  after  all,  Webster 
carries  his  own  sense  and  savour.  A  showman, 
"motley  on  back  and  pointing-pole  in  hand,"  can 
but  draw  attention,  and  deliver  a  prologue.  If 
I  can  explain  briefly  to  anyone  the  sort  of  plays 
Webster  was  writing,  the  sort  of  characters  that 
he  took  delight  in,  the  kind  of  verse  he  used,  the 
kind  of  literary  effect  he  probably  aimed  at — 
as  I  see  all  these  things — I  can  then  only  take 
him  up  to  a  speech  of  the  Duchess  and  leave  him 
there.    One  cannot  explain 

"What  would  it  pleasure  me  to  have  my  throat  cut 
With  diamonds?  or  to  be  smothered 
With  cassia  ?  or  to  be  shot  to  death  with  pearls  ? 
I  know  death  hath  ten  thousand  several  doors 
For  men  to  take  their  exits ;  and  'tis  found 
They  go  on  such  strange  geometrical  hinges 
You  may  open  them  both  ways :  .  .  ." 

To  paraphrase  it,  or  to  hang  it  with  epithets, 
would  be  silly,  almost  indecent.  One  can  only 
quote.  And  though  quotation  is  pleasant,  it  is 
a  cheap  way  of  filling  space;  and  I  have  written 


CHARACTERISTICS  125 

this  essay  on  the  assumption  that  its  readers 
will  be  able  to  have  at  least  TJie  Duchess  of  Malfi 
and  The  White  Devil  before  them. 

So  I  shall  only  attempt,  in  this  chapter,  to  men- 
tion some  of  Webster's  most  interesting  charac- 
teristics, and  to  analyse  one  or  two  of  them. 

His  general  position,  as  the  rearguard  of  the 
great  period  in  Elizabethan  drama  and  Htera- 
ture,  I  have  already  outlined.  He  took  a  certain 
kind  of  play,  a  play  with  a  certain  atmosphere, 
which  appealed  to  him,  and  made  two  works  of 
individual  genius.  Beyond  this  type  of  play 
and  the  tradition  of  it,  there  are  no  very  im- 
portant "influences"  on  him.  Shakespeare's 
studies  of  madness  may  have  affected  him.  The 
Duchess, 

"I'll  tell  thee  a  miracle; 
I  am  not  mad  yet,  to  my  cause  of  sorrow; 
The  heaven  o'er  my  head  seems  made  of  molten  brass, 
The  earth  of  flaming  sulphur,  yet  I  am  not  mad," 

has  a  note  of  Lear  in  it,  but  also,  and  perhaps 
more  definitely,  of  Antonio  and  Mellida.  From 
Ben  Jonson  and  Chapman  he  borrowed.  And 
something  of  their  attitude  to  drama  became  his. 
But  he  does  not  imitate  them  in  any  important 
individual  quality.  He  pillaged  Donne,  too,  as 
much  of  him  as  was  accessible  to  a  middle-class 
dramatist,  and  occasionally  seems  to  emulate  the 


126  JOHN  WEBSTER 

extraordinary  processes  of  that  mind.  The  char- 
acters in  Webster's  plays,  hke  the  treatment  of 
the  story,  in  as  far  as  they  are  not  his  own,  are 
the  usual  characters  of  the  drama  of  eight  years 
before.  Once  only  does  he  noticeably  seem  to 
take  a  figure  from  the  popular  gallery  of  the 
years  in  which  he  was  writing.  The  little  prince 
Giovanni,  like  Shakespeare's  Mamillius,  is 
adopted  from  the  Beaumont  and  Fletcher  chil- 
dren. He  has  the  same  precocity  in  wit  (it  seems 
a  httle  distressing  to  modern  taste),  and  more 
of  their  sentimentality  than  Hermione's  son. 
But,  against  that  background,  he  is,  on  the  whole, 
a  touching  and  lovely  figure. 

The  one  influence  upon  Webster  that  is  al- 
ways noticeable  is  that  of  satire.  His  nature 
tended  to  the  outlook  of  satire;  and  his  plays 
give  evidence  that  he  read  Elizabethan,  and  in 
some  form  Latin  satire  with  avidity.  Hamlet, 
the  Malcontent,  and  all  the  heroes  of  that  type 
of  play,  "railed"  continually.  But  with  Webster 
every  character  and  nearly  every  speech  has 
something  of  the  satirical  outlook.  They  de- 
scribe each  other  satirically.  They  are  for  ever 
girding  at  the  conventional  objects  of  satire,  cer- 
tain social  follies  and  crimes.  There  are  several 
little  irrelevant  scenes  of  satire,  like  the  malevo- 
lent discussion  of  Count  Malatesti  {D.M,,  III. 


CHARACTERISTICS  127 

3).  It  is  incessant.  The  topics  are  the  ordinary 
ones,  the  painting  of  women,  the  ingratitude  of 
princes,  the  swaggering  of  blusterers,  the  cow- 
ardice of  pseudo-soldiers.  It  gives  part  of  the 
peculiar  atmosphere  of  these  plays. 

This  rests  on  a  side  of  Webster's  nature,  which, 
in  combination  with  his  extraordinary  literary 
gifts,  produces  another  queer  characteristic  of  his  , 
— his  fondness  for,  and  skill  in  comment.     HeJ 
is  rather  more  like  a  hterary  man  trying  to  write' 
for  the  theatre  than  any  of  his  contemporaries. 
Theatrically,  though  he  is  competent  and  some- 
times powerful,  he  exhibits  no  vastly  unusual 
ability.    It  is  his  comments  that  bite  deep.    Such 
gems  as  Flamineo's  description  of  Camillo: 

"When  he  wears  white  satin  one  would  take  him 
by  his  black  muzzle  to  be  no  other  creature  than  a 
maggot;" 

or  of  the  Spanish  ambassador : 

"He  carries  his  face  in's  ruff,  as  I  have  seen  a 
serving  man  carry  glasses  in  a  cipress  hat-band, 
monstrous  steady,  for  fear  of  breaking:  he  looks 
like  the  claw  of  a  black-bird,  first  salted,  and  then 
broiled  in  a  candle;" 

or  Lodovico's  of  the  black  woman  Zanche  in  love : 

"Mark  her,  I  prithee ;  she  simpers  like  the  suds 
A  collier  hath  been  washed  in;" 


128  JOHN  WEBSTER 

have  frequently  been  quoted.  They  have  a 
purely  literary  merit.  In  other  places  he 
achieves  a  dramatic  effect,  which  would  be  a  lit- 
tle less  in  a  theatre  than  in  the  book,  by  com- 
ment. When  Bosola  brings  the  terrible  discov- 
ery of  the  secret  to  Ferdinand  and  the  Cardinal, 
he  communicates  it  to  them,  unheard  by  us,  up- 
stage. We  only  know,  in  reading,  how  they  take 
it,  by  the  comments  of  Pescara,  Silvio,  and  Delio, 
who  are  watching,  down-stage — 

Pesc.  "Mark  Prince  Ferdinand: 

A  very  salamander  lives  in's  eye, 

To  mock  the  eager  violence  of  fire." 
SiL.    "That  cardinal  hath  made  more  bad  faces  with  his 

oppression  than  ever   Michael  Angelo  made   good 

ones:  he  lifts  up's  nose  like  a  foul  porpoise  before 

a  storm." 
Pes.    "The  Lord  Ferdinand  laughs." 
Del.  "Like  a  deadly  cannon 

That  lightens  ere  it  smokes  .  .  ." 

it  goes  straight  to  the  nerves.  "The  Lord  Ferdi- 
nand laughs."    It  is  unforgettable. 

Webster  had  always,  in  his  supreme  moments, 
that  trick  of  playing  directly  on  the  nerves.  It 
is  the  secret  of  Bosola's  tortures  of  the  Duchess, 
and  of  much  of  Flamineo.  Though  the  popular 
conception  of  him  is  rather  one  of  immense  gloom 
and  perpetual  preoccupation  with  death,  his 
power  lies  almost  more  in  the  intense,  sometimes 


CHARACTERISTICS  129 

horrible,  vigour  of  some  of  his  scenes,  and  his 
uncanny  probing  to  the  depths  of  the  heart.  In 
his  characters  you  see  the  instincts  at  work  jerk- 
ing and  actuating  them,  and  emotions  pouring 
out  irregularly,  unconsciously,  in  floods  or  spurts 
and  jets,  driven  outward  from  within,  as  you 
sometimes  do  in  real  people. 

The  method  of  progression  which  Webster 
used  in  his  writing,  from  speech  to  speech  or 
idea  to  idea,  is  curiously  individual.  The  ideas 
do  not  develop  into  each  other  as  in  Shakespeare, 
nor  are  they  tied  together  in  neatly  planned 
curves  as  in  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  He  seems 
to  have,  and  we  know  he  did,  put  them  into  the 
stream  of  thought  from  outside ;  plumping  them 
down  side  by  side.  Yet  the  very  cumbrousness 
of  this  adds,  in  a  way,  to  the  passion  and  force 
of  his  scenes,  as  a  swift  stream  seems  swifter  and 
wilder  when  its  course  is  broken  by  rocks  and 
boulders.  The  craft  of  Shakespeare's  genius 
moves  with  a  speedy  beauty  like  a  yacht  running 
close  into  the  wind ;  Websters  is  a  barge  quanted' 
slowly  but  incessantly  along  some  canal,  cum- 
brous but  rather  impressive. 

This  quality  of  the  progression  of  Webster's 
thought,  and,  in  part,  of  his  language,  contrasts 
curiously  with  his  metr6.  The  Elizabethan  use  of 
blank  verse  was  always  liable  to  be  rather  fine; 


130  JOHN  WEBSTER 

but  there  was  only  a  short  period,  and  it  was 
only  in  a  few  writers,  that  it  got  really  free — 
until  its  final  dissolution  in  the  thirties.  Web- 
ster was  one  of  these  writers,  probably  the  freest. 
Only  Shakespeare  can  approach  him  in  the  lib- 
erties he  took  with  blank  verse ;  but  Shakespeare's 
liberties   conformed  to   higher  laws.      Webster 

^probably  had  a  worse  ear  for  metre,  at  least  in 
blank  verse,  than  any  of  his  contemporaries.    His 

I  verse  is  perpetually  of  a  vague,  troubled  kind. 
Each  line  tends  to  have  about  ten  syllables  and 
about  five  feet.  It  looks  in  the  distance  like  a 
blank  verse  line.  Sometimes  this  line  is  extraor- 
dinarily successful ;  though  it  is  never  quite  scan- 
nable.    Brachiano's 

"It  is  a  word  infinitely  terrible,** 

is  tremendously  moving.  But  sometimes  Web- 
ster's metrical  extravagance  does  not  justify  it- 
self, and  rather  harasses.  The  trick  of  beginning 
a  line  with  two  unaccented  syllables,  if  repeated 
too  often  in  the  same  passage,  does  more  to  break 
the  back  of  the  metre  than  almost  any  other  pos- 
sible peculiarity. 

On  the  whole  it  is  probable  that  Webster  did 
all  this  on  purpose,  seeing  that  a  larger  licence 
of  metre  suits  blank  verse  in  drama  than  is  per- 
missible in  literature.     When  he  turned  poet, 


CHARACTERISTICS  131 

in  A  Monumental  Column,  he  is  equally  unmet- 
rical;  but  that,  can  probably  be  attributed  to 
the  very  strong  influence  of  Donne.  Certainly 
the  lyrics  in  his  plays  would  seem  to  show  that 
as  a  lyric  poet  he  could  have  been  among  the 
greatest,  a  master  of  every  subtlety,  at  least  of 
that  lyric  metre  which  he  did  use.  It  is  the  one 
which  the  Elizabethans,  almost,  invented,  and 
upon  which  they  performed  an  inconceivable  va- 
riety of  music.  Milton,  who  learnt  so  much  from 
them  in  this  respect,  made  this  metre  the  chief 
part  of  his  heritage.  But  even  he  could  not  in- 
clude all  that  various  music.  It  is  the  metre  of 
L' Allegro,  II  Penseroso,  and  the  end  of  Comus, 
No  man  ever  got  a  stranger  and  more  perfect 
melody  from  it  than  Webster  in  his  dirges. 

Webster's  handling  of  a  play,  and  his  style  of 
writing,  have  something  rather  slow  and  old- 
fashioned  about  them.  He  was  not  like  Shake- 
speare or  Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  up-to-date  and 
"slick."  He  worried  his  plays  out  with  a  grunt- 
ing pertinacity.  There  are  several  uncouth  char- 
acteristics of  his  that  have  an  effect  which  halts 
between  archaism  and  a  kind  of  childish  awk- 
wardness, like  "primitive"  art  of  various  nations 
and  periods.  Sometimes  he  achieves  the  same 
result  it  can  have,  of  a  simplicity  and  directness 
refreshingly  different  from  later  artifice  and  ac- 


132  JOHN  WEBSTER 

complishment.  Sometimes  he  only  seems,  to  the 
most  kindly  critic,  to  fail  hopelessly  for  lack  of 
skill.  One  of  these  characteristics  is  the  use  of 
couplets,  usually  to  end  the  scene,  and  commonly 
of  a  generalising  nature.  This  is,  of  course,  old- 
fashioned.  The  frequency  of  such  couplets  is 
an  often-noticed  feature  of  the  early  Elizabethan 
drama:  and  the  plays  of  such  a  writer  as  Shake- 
speare are  dated  by  the  help  of  the  percentage 
of  rhyming  to  unrhyming  lines.  Even  as  late 
as  Webster,  other  authors  sometimes  ended  the 
play,  or  a  scene,  with  a  couplet.  But  they  did 
it  with  grace;  using  it  almost  as  a  musical  de- 
vice, to  bring  the  continued  melody  of  their  verse 
to  a  close.  And  in  the  earlier  plays,  where  one 
or  more  rhyming  couplets  end  most  scenes  and 
many  speeches,  and  even,  especially  in  the  more 
lyrical  parts,  come  into  the  middle  of  passages, 
the  rest  of  the  versification  is  of  a  simple,  rhyth- 
mical end-stopped  kind;  and  so  the  couplets 
seem  scarcely  different  from  the  rest,  a  deeper 
shade  of  the  same  colour.  Webster's  couplets 
are  electric  green  or  crimson,  a  violent  contrast 
with  the  rough,  jerky,  sketchy  blank  verse  he 
generally  uses.  Some  of  them  are  so  incongru- 
ous as  to  be  ridiculous.  At  the  end  of  a  stormy 
passage  with  the  Cardinal,  Ferdinand  says : 


CHARACTERISTICS  133 

"In,  in;  I'll  go  sleep. 
Till  I  know  who  leaps  my  sister,  I'll  not  stir; 
That  known,  I'll  find  scorpions  to  sting  my  whips. 
And  fix  her  in  a  general  eclipse."  [Exeunt. 

If  you  consider  the  general  level  of  Webster's 
writing,  this  rings  almost  childish.  In  llie 
White  Devil  there  are  two  instances  of  rhyming 
couplets  close  to  each  other,  one  superbly  suc- 
cessful, the  other  a  failure.  The  rather  hideous 
and  queerly  vital  wooing-scene  between  Brachi- 
ano  and  Vittoria  leads  up  to  a  speech  of  the 
former's  that  ends: 

"You  shall  to  me  at  once, 
Be  dukedom,  health,  wife,  children,  friends,  and  all." 

Cornelia,  Vittoria's  mother,  who  has  been  listen- 
ing behind,  unseen,  breaks  the  tension  with  a 
rush  forward  and  the  cry: 

"Woe  to  light  hearts,  they  still  forerun  our  fall!" 

It  has  a  Greek  ring  about  it.  It  brings  the  fresh 
and  terrible  air  of  a  larger  moral  world  into  the 
tiny  passionate  heat  of  that  interview.  And 
withal  there  is  a  run  of  fine  music  in  the  line. 
The  rhyme  helps  all  this  materially.  It  enhances 
and  marks  the  moment,  and  assists  the  play.  But 
a  dozen  lines  later,  after  some  burning  speeches 
of  reproach  in  ordinary  blank  verse,  Corneha 


1 


134  JOHN  WEBSTER 

drops  into  rhyme  again  to  show  the  moral  of 
it  all: 

"See,  the  curse  of  children ! 
In  life  they  keep  us  frequently  in  tears; 
And  in  the  cold  grave  leave  us  in  pale  fears."  ^ 

The  end  of  the  play  affords  even  more  ex- 
traordinary examples  of  these  couplets.  Sand- 
wiched in  between  the  dying  Vittoria's  tremen- 
dous 

"My  soul,  like  a  ship  in  a  black  storm. 
Is  driven,  I  know  not  whither," 

and  Flamineo's  equally  fine  sentence — an  exam- 
ple of  generalisation  rightly  and  nobly  used — 

"We  cease  to  grieve,  cease  to  be  fortune's  slaves. 
Nay,  cease  to  die,  by  dying," 

comes  the  smug  and  dapper  irrelevancy  of 

"Prosperity  doth  bewitch  men,  seeming  clear; 
But  seas  do  laugh,  show  white,  when  rocks  are  near." 

It  is  beyond  expression,  the  feeling  of  being  let 
down,  such  couplets  give  one. 

In  three  places  a  diif  erent  and  very  queer  side 
of  Webster's  old-fashionedness  or  of  his  occa- 
sional   dramatic    insensibility,    is    unpleasantly 

*This  couplet  seems  even  absurdcr  to  us  than  it  should,  because 
the  word  "frequently"  has  since  Webster  got  a  rapid  colloquial 
sense  of  "quite  often." 


CHARACTERISTICS  135 

manifest.  Here  it  becomes  plainer,  perhaps,  that  it 
is  rather  a  childish  than  an  old-fashioned  tendency 
which  betrays  him  to  these  faults.  Three  times, 
once  in  The  White  Devil,  and  twice  in  The  Duch- 
ess of  Malfi,  the  current  of  quick,  living,  realistic 
speeches — each  character  jerking  out  a  hard,  bit- 
ing, dramatic  sentence  or  two — is  broken  by  long- 
winded,  irrelevant,  and  fantastically  unrealistic 
tales.  They  are  of  a  sententious,  simple  kind, 
such  as  might  appear  in  ^Esop.  Generally  they 
seem  to  be  lugged  in  by  their  ears  into  the  play. 
They  are  introduced  with  the  same  bland,  start- 
ling inconsequence  with  which  some  favourite 
song  is  brought  into  a  musical  comedy,  but  with  i 
immeasurably  less  justification.  The  instance  in  / 
The  White  Devil  is  less  bad  than  the  others." 
Francisco  is  trying  to  stir  Camillo  against  the 
indignity  of  horns.  He  suddenly  tells  him  a  long 
tale  how  Phoebus  was  going  to  be  married,  and 
the  trades  that  don't  like  excessive  heat  made 
a  deputation  to  Jupiter  against  the  marriage, 
saying  one  sun  was  bad  enough,  they  didn't  want 
a  lot  of  little  ones.  So,  one  Vittoria  is  bad 
enough ;  it  is  a  good  thing  there  are  no  children. 
It  is  pointless  and  foolish  enough,  in  such  a  play. 
But  the  instances  in  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  sur- 
pass it.  In  the  tremendous  scene  in  the  bed- 
chamber when  Ferdinand  accuses  the  Duchess 


136  JOHN  WEBSTER 

of  her  marriage,  the  mad  frenzy  of  his  reproaches 
is  excellently  rendered.  She  replies  with  short 
sentences,  bursting  from  her  heart.  Each  of  his 
taunts  carries  flame.  The  whole  is  hving,  terse, 
and  affecting.  In  the  middle  of  this  Ferdinand 
breaks  into  a  long  old-fashioned  allegory  about 
Love,  Reputation,  and  Death,  a  tale  that  (but 
for  a  fine  line  or  two)  might  have  appeared  in 
any  Elizabethan  collection  of  rhymed  parables. 
The  point  of  it  is  that  Reputation  is  very  easy 
to  lose,  and  the  Duchess  has  lost  hers.  It  is  as 
irrelevant  and  not  so  amusing  as  it  would  be  if 
Michael  Angelo  had  written  a  Christmas  cracker 
posy  on  the  scroll  the  Cumaean  Sibyl  holds.  In 
the  third  instance  the  Duchess  mars  the  end  of 
a  lovely  and  terrible  scene  (III.  5)  by  a  would- 
be  funny  moral  tale  about  a  dogfish  and  a  sal- 
mon. Here  there  is  a  sort  of  pathetic  suitability 
in  the  Duchess,  half  broken  with  sorrow^  almost 
unconsciously  babbling  childish  tales  to  her  ene- 
mies. But,  with  the  other  tales  in  mind,  one 
finds  it  hard  to  believe  Webster  meant  this.  If 
he  did,  he  did  not  bring  his  effect  off.  The  tale 
is  too  incongruous  with  the  rest  of  the  scene. 

There  are  still  further  instances  of  Webster's 
occasional  extraordinary  childishness  in  drama, 
namely  his  shameless  use  of  asides,  soliloquies, 
and  other  devices  for  telling  his  audience  the 


CHARACTERISTICS  137 

motives  of  the  actors  or  the  state  of  the  plot. 
The  Elizabethans  were  always  rather  careless. 
The  indiscriminate  soliloquy  or  aside  were  part 
of  their  inheritance,  which  they  but  gradually  got 
rid  of.  If  soliloquies,  and  even  asides,  are 
handled  rightly,  in  a  kind  of  drama  like  the 
Elizabethan,  they  need  not  be  blemishes.  They 
can  add  greatly  to  the  play.  Hamlet's  solilo- 
quies do.  The  trend  of  recent  dramatic  art  has 
been' unwise  in  totally  condemning  this  stage  de- 
vice. There  are  two  quite  distinct  effects  of 
soliloquy  in  a  play.  One  is  to  tell  the  audience 
the  plot;  the  other  is  to  let  them  see  character  or 
feel  atmosphere.  The  first  is  bad,  the  second 
good.  It  is  perfectly  easy  for  an  audience  to  ac- 
cept the  convention  of  a  man  uttering  his 
thoughts  aloud.  It  is  even  based  on  a  real  occur- 
rence. When  the  man  is  alone  on  the  stage  it 
is  an  entirely  simple  and  good  convention.  Even 
if  there  are  other  characters  present,  i.e.  when  the 
soliloquy  approaches  the  aside,  the  trick  only 
needs  careful  artistic  handling.  But  the  essen- 
tial condition  is  that  the  audience  feels  it  is  over- 
hearing the  speaker,  as  much,  at  least,  as  it  over- 
hears the  dialogue  of  the  play.  In  soliloquies 
or  in  dialogues  the  characters  may,  to  a  certain 
extent,  turn  outward  to  the  audience,  and  ad- 
dress them ;  in  the  same  way  as  they  forbear  from 


138  JOHN  WEBSTER 

often  turning  their  backs  on  them.  But  solilo- 
quies must  go  no  further.  So  far,  they  are  ac- 
ceptable. If  we  can  accept  the  extraordinary 
convention  that  a  man's  conversation  shall  be 
coherent,  and  in  blank  verse  to  boot,  we  can 
easily  swallow  his  thoughts  being  communicated 
to  us  in  the  same  way.  It  is  only  when  the 
dramatist  misuses  this  licence,  and  foists  improb- 
able and  unnaturally  conscious  thoughts  on  a 
man,  in  order  to  explain  his  plot,  that  we  feel 
restive.  The  fault,  of  course,  lies  in  the  unnat- 
uralness  and  the  shameless  sudden  appearance 
of  the  dramatist's  own  person,  rather  than  in 
the  form  of  a  soliloquy.  Only,  soliloquies  are  es- 
pecially liable  to  this.  A  legitimate  and  superb 
use  of  soliloquy  occurs  near  the  end  of  The 
Duchess  of  Malfi,  in  a  passage  from  which  I 
have  already  quoted,  where  the  Cardinal  enters, 
alone,  reading  a  book: 

"I  am  puzzled  in  a  question  about  hell: 
He  says^  in  hell  there's  one  material  fire, 
And  yet  it  shall  not  burn  all  men  alike, 
Lay  him  by. 

— How  tedious  is  a  guilty  conscience! 
When  I  look  into  the  fish-pond  in  my  garden, 
Methinks  I  see  a  thing  arm'd  with  a  rake. 
That  seems  to  strike  at  me." 
[Enter  Bosola  and  Servant  hearing  Antonio's  hodyJ] 


CHARACTERISTICS  13& 

This  is  an  entirely  permissible  and  successful 
use  of  soliloquy.  The  words  and  thought  are 
mysteriously  thrilling.  They  sharpen  the  agony 
of  the  spectator's  mind  to  a  tense  expectation; 
which  is  broken  by  the  contrast  of  the  swift  pur- 
pose of  Bosola's  entry,  with  the  sei^ant  and  the 
body,  and  the  violent  progression  of  events  en- 
suing. The  whole  is  in  tone  together;  and  the 
effect  bites  deep,  the  feeling  of  the  beginning  of 
sheeting  rain,  breaking  the  gloomy  pause  before 
a  thunderstorm.  But  there  are  cases  of  Webster 
using  the  soliloquy  badly.  In  The  White  Devil, 
when  the  servant  has  told  Francisco  that  Brachi- 
ano  and  Vittoria  have  fled  the  city  together,  he 
goes  out.  Francisco  is  left  alone,  exclaiming, 
"Fled!  O,  damnable!"  He  immediately  alters 
his  key: 

"How  fortunate  are  my  wishes !     Why,  *twas  this 
I  only  laboured!     I  did  send  the  letter 
To  instruct  him  what  to  do,"  etc.,  etc. 

One  finds  the  dramatist  rather  too  prominently 
and  audibly  there.  But  his  presence  becomes 
even  more  offensive  when  he  is  visible  behind  two 
characters  and  their  dialogue,  as  in  the  instance 
from  The  DeviVs  Law-Case,  II.  1.  A  worse 
case  of  this,  both  in  itself  and  because  it  comes  in 
a  tragedy,  occurs  in  The  White  Devil,  where 


140  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Francisco  and  Monticelso  explain  their  actions 
to  each  other,  after  Camillo,  charged  with  the 
commission  against  the  pirates,  has  made  his 
exit. 

Francisco.     "So,  'twas  well  fitted:  now  shall  we  discern 

How  his  wish'd  absence  will  give  violent  way 

To  Duke  Brachiano's  lust." 
Monticelso.  "Why,  that  was  it; 

To  what  scorned  purpose  else  should  we  make  choice 

Of  him  for  a  sea-captain.''"  etc. 

But  having  informed  us  of  their  motives  in 
this,  Webster  suddenly  remembers  that  we  may- 
say,  "But  why  should  they  start  on  such  a  line 
of  action  at  all?"  So  Monticelso,  later  in  the 
conversation,  apropos  of  nothing  in  particular^ 
remarks — 

"It  may  be  objected,  I  am  dishonourable 
To  play  thus  with  my  kinsman;  but  I  answer, 
For  my  revenge  I'd  stake  a  brother's  life. 
That,  being  wrong'd,  durst  not  avenge  himself." 

A  very  similar  instance  of  a  pathetic  attempt 
•to  make  the  audience  swallow  the  plot,  by  care- 
jfully  explaining  the  motives,  is  in  the  fourth  act 
of  The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  a  play  distinctly  less 
disfigured  by  these  childishnesses  of  Webster's 
than  The  White  Devil.  There  Ferdinand,  in 
what  purports  to  be  a  conversation  with  Bosola, 
goes  back  in  his  mind  and  rakes  out,  all  unasked, 


CHARACTERISTICS  141 

his  two  motives  for  persecuting  the  Duchess. 
His  behaviour,  though  badly  portrayed,  is  less 
unconvincing  and  improbable  than  The  White 
Devil  instance.  But  such  blunders  make  even 
the  asides  of  Flamineo,  when  he  is  explaining  his 
antic  behaviour  to  the  audience,  flagrant  as  they 
are,  seem  mild  and  legitimate  stage-devices. 

A  special  class  of  unrealistic  asides  and  con- 
versations, and  one  very  much  affected  by  the 
Elizabethans,  is  the  situation  when  A.,  B.,  and 
C.  are  on  the  stage,  and  B.  and  C.  are  carrying 
bn  a  conversation,  interspersed  with  asides  be- 
tween A.  and  B.  which  C.  does  not  notice.  Peo- 
ple who  have  experience  of  the  stage  know  how 
almost  impossible  this  is  to  manage  with  any 
show  of  probability.  In  a  comedy  or  farce  the 
absurdity  matters  less.  But  the  scene  between 
Lodovico,  Francisco,  and  Zanche,  after  Brachi- 
ano's  death,  though  it  partakes  of  farce,  makes 
one  uneasy. 

All  these  childishnesses  and  blunders  in  Web- 
ster's plays,  soliloquies,  asides,  generalisations, 
couplets,  and  the  rest,  are  due,  no  doubt,  to  care- 
lessness and  technical  incapacity.  His  gifts  were 
of  a  different  kind.  But  the  continual  general- 
isations arise  also  from  a  particular  bent  of  his 
mind,  and  a  special  need  he  felt.    It  is  normal  in 


142  JOHN  WEBSTER 

the  human  mind,  it  was  unusually  strong  in  the 
Elizabethans,  and  it  found  its  summit  in  Webster 
of  all  of  that  time — the  desire  to  discover  the 
general  rule  your  particular  instance  illustrates, 
and  the  delight  of  enunciating  it.  Many  people 
find  their  only  intellectual  pleasure  in  life,  in  the 
continued  practice  of  this.  But  drama  seems, 
or  seemed,  to  demand  it  with  especial  hunger; 
most  of  all  the  poetic  drama.  The  Greeks  felt 
this,  and  in  the  form  of  drama  they  developed 
this  was  one  of  the  chief  intellectual  functions  of 
the  chorus.  I  say  "intellectual,"  meaning  that 
in  their  music  and  movement  they  appealed 
through  other  channels  to  the  audience — though 
here,  too,  in  part,  to  something  the  same  taste 
in  the  audience,  that  is  to  say,  the  desire  to  feel 
a  little  disjunct  from  the  individual  case,  and 
to  view  it  against  some  sort  of  background. 
Metre  itself  has,  psychologically,  the  same  effect, 
a  little.    But  the  brain  demands  to  be  told  ^o  m^ 

ffyvpaL  vLKo.  or  fxlfivet.  Se  jjiifxpovro^  ly  xpov^ff  Aios  iro-deiv  rov  epiavTa^ 

or  any  of  the  other  deductions  and  rules. 

The  Greeks,  then,  received,  to  their  satisfac- 
tion, the  knowledge  of  other  instances  or  of  the 
general  rule  or  moral,  from  the  chorus.  It  is 
interesting  to  see  the  various  ways  of  achieving 
the  effects  of  a  chorus  that  later  drama  has  used. 
For  to   some  extent  the  need  is  always   felt, 


CHARACTERISTICS  143 

though  not  violently  enough  to  overcome  the 
dramatic  disadvantages  of  an  actual  chorus. 
Sometimes  one  character  in  a  play  is  put  aside 
to  serve  the  purpose,  like  the  holy  man  in  Max- 
im Gorki's  The  Lower  Depths.  Or  the  char- 
acters sit  down  and,  a  little  unrealistically,  argue 
out  their  moral,  as  in  Mr.  Shaw's  plays.  Mr. 
Shaw  and  a  good  many  modern  German,  Eng- 
lish, and  Scandinavian  writers,  also  depend  on 
the  spectator  having  picked  up,  from  prefaces 
and  elsewhere,  the  general  body  of  the  author's 
views  against  the  background  of  which  any  par- 
ticular play  is  to  be  performed.  Ibsen  had  two 
devices.  One  was  to  sum  up  the  matter  in  some 
prominent  and  startling  remark  near  the  end, 
like  the  famous  "People  don't  do  such  things!" 
The  other  was  to  have  a  half-mystical  back- 
ground, continually  hinted  at;  the  mountain- 
mines  in  John  Gabriel  Borkman,  the  heights  in 
When  We  Dead  Awaken,  the  sea  in  The  Lady 
from  the  Sea,  the  wild  duck.  In  certain  catch- 
words these  methods  met;  "homes  for  men  and 
women,"  "ghosts,"  "you  don't  mean  it!"  and  the 
rest.  The  temptation  to  point  a  moral  in  the 
last  words  of  a  play  is  almost  irresistible;  and 
sometimes  justified.  A  well-known  modern  play 
called  Waste  ends,  "the  waste!  the  waste  of  it 
all!"    The  Elizabethans  were  very  fond  of  doing 


144  JOHN  WEBSTER 

this.  They  had  the  advantage  that  they  could 
end  with  a  rhymed  couplet.  But  they  were  liable 
to  do  it  at  the  end  of  any  scene  or  episode.  It 
has  been  pointed  out  how  much  Webster  was 
addicted  to  this  practice.  Towards  their  close 
his  plays  became  a  string  of  passionate  generali- 
ties. Antonio  and  Vittoria  both  die  uttering 
warnings  against  "the  courts  of  princes."  Other 
characters  alternate  human  cries  at  their  own 
distress  with  great  generalisations  about  life  and 
death.  These  give  to  the  hearts  of  the  spectators 
such  comfort  and  such  an  outlet  for  their  con- 
fused pity  and  grief  as  music  and  a  chorus  afford 
in  other  cases.  But  Webster  also  felt  the  need 
of  such  broad  moralising  in  the  middle  of  his 
tragedies.  Sometimes  he  pours  through  the 
mouth  of  such  characters  as  Bosola  and  Fla- 
mineo,  generalisation  after  dull  generalisation, 
without  illuminating.  Greek  choruses  have 
failed  in  the  same  way.  But  when  a  gnome  that 
is  successful  comes,  it  is  w^orth  the  pains.  The 
solidity  and  immensity  of  Webster's  mind  behind 
/the  incidents  is  revealed.  Flamineo  fills  this  part 
at  the  death  of  Brachiano.  But  often  he  and 
Bosola  are  a  different,  and  very  Websterian,  cho- 
rus. Their  ceaseless  comments  of  indecency  and 
mockery  are  used  in  some  scenes  to  throw  up  by 
contrast  and  enhance  by  interpretation  the  pas- 


CHARACTERISTICS  145 

sions  and  sufferings  of  human  beings.  They  pro- 
vide a  background  for  Prometheus ;  but  a  back- 
ground of  entrails  and  vultures,  not  the  cliffs 
of  the  Caucasus.  The  horror  of  suffering  is  in- 
tensified by  such  means  till  it  is  unbearable.  The 
crisis  of  her  travail  comes  on  the  tormented  body 
and  mind  of  the  Duchess  (II.  1)  to  the  swift 
accompaniment  of  Bosola's  mockery.  Brachi- 
ano's  wooing,  and  his  later  recapture,  of  Vittoria, 
take  on  the  sick  dreadfulness  of  figures  in  a 
nightmare,  whose  shadows  parody  them  with  ob- 
scene caricature;  because  of  the  ceaseless  ape- 
like comments  of  Flamineo,  cold,  itchy,  filthily 
knowing. 

Light  has  interestingly  been  thrown  of  late  on 
Webster's  method  of  composition.  It  had  long 
been  known  that  he  repeats  a  good  many  lines 
and  phrases  from  himself  and  from  other  peo- 
ple: and  that  a  great  deal  of  his  writing,  espe- 
cially in  his  best  and  most  careful  work,  has  the 
air  of  being  proverbial,  or  excerpt.  John  Ad- 
dington  Symonds  remarked  with  insight  a  good 
many  years  ago  that  Webster  must  have  used 
a  note-book.  His  plays  read  like  it.  And  now 
Mr.  Crawford  has  discovered  some  of  the  sources 
he  compiled  his  note-book  from.^ 

*  Crawford,  Collectanea,  i.  20-46,  ii.  1-63. 


146  JOHN  WEBSTER 

It  would  be  useless  to  repeat  Mr.  Crawford's 
list  with  a  few  additions,  or  to  examine  the  in- 
stances one  by  one.  Nearly,  not  quite,  all  his 
cases  seem  to  me  to  be  real  ones.  There  are  cer- 
tainly quite  enough  to  enable  one  to  draw  impor- 
tant inferences  about  Webster's  way  of  working. 
These  instances  of  borrowing  are  very  numerous, 
and  chiefly  from  two  books,  Sidney's  Arcadia, 
K  and  Montaigne — favourite  sources  of  Eliza- 
bethan wisdom.  They  are  very  clearly  marked, 
and  consist  in  taking  striking  thoughts  and 
phrases  in  the  original,  occasionally  quite  long 
ones,  and  rewriting  them  almost  verbally,  some- 
times with  slight  changes  to  make  them  roughly 
metrical.  It  is  a  quite  different  matter  from  the 
faint  "parallels"  of  ordinary  commentators.  I 
give  one  of  the  more  striking  instances,  to  illus- 
trate : 

Arcadia,  Bk.  II.: 

"But  she,  as  if  he  had  spoken  of  a  small  matter 
when  he  mentioned  her  life,  to  which  she  had  not 
leisure  to  attend,  desired  him,  if  he  loved  her,  to 
shew  it  in  finding  some  way  to  save  Antiphilus.  For 
her,  she  found  the  world  but  a  wearisome  stage 
unto  her,  where  she  played  a  part  against  her  will, 
and  therefore  besought  him  not  to  cast  his  love 
in  so  unfruitful  a  place  as  could  not  love  it- 
self. .  .  ." 


CHARACTERISTICS  147 

Arcadia,  Ek.  III.: 

"It  happened,  at  that  time  upon  his  bed,  towards 
the  dawning  of  the  day,  he  heard  one  stir  in  his 
chamber,  by  the  motion  of  garments,  and  with  an 
angry  voice  asked  who  was  there.  *A  poor  gentle- 
woman,' answered  the  party,  'that  wish  long  life 
unto  you.'  'And  I  soon  death  unto  you,'  said  he, 
'for  the  horrible  curse  you  have  given  me.'  " 

The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  IV.  1  (p.  85) : 

Duchess.  "^Vho  must  dispatch  me? 

I  account  this  world  a  tedious  theatre 

For  I  do  play  a  part  in't  'gainst  my  will." 
BosoLA.     "Come,  be  of  comfort;  I  will  save  your  life.** 
Duchess.     "Indeed,  I  have  not  leisure  to  tend 

So  small  a  business." 
BosoLA.     "Now,  by  my  life,  I  pity  you." 
Duchess.     "Thou  art  a  fool,  then. 

To  waste  thy  pity  on  a  thing  so  wretched 

As  cannot  pity  itself.     I  am  full  of  daggers. 

Puff,  let  me  blow  these  vipers  from  me! 

What  are  you.^" 

Enter  Servant. 
Servant.     "One  that  wishes  you  long  life." 
Duchess.     "I  would  thou  wert  hang'd  for  the  horrible 
curse 

Thou  hast  given  me." 

There  are  three  explanations  of  all  this. 
Either  Webster  knew  the  Arcadia  so  well  that 
he  had  a  lot  of  it  by  heart.  Or  he  had  the  book 
and  worked  from  it.  Or  he  kept  a  note-book, 
into  which  he  had  entered  passages  that  struck 
him,  and  which  he  used  to  write  the  play  from. 


148  JOHN  WEBSTER 

It  seems  to  me  certain  that  the  third  is  the  true 
explanation.  We  know  that  Elizabethan  authors 
did  sometimes  keep  note-books  in  this  way.  Ba- 
con did  so,  and  Ben  Jonson,  whom  Webster  ad- 
mired and  rather  resembled,  worked  most  me- 
thodically this  way.  The  memory  theory  could 
scarcely  explain  the  verbal  accuracy  of  so  many 
passages.  But  there  are  other  considerations, 
which  make  the  note-book  probable.  The  pas- 
sages from  the  Arcadia  or  from  Montaigne  came 
very  often  in  lumps.  You  will  get  none,  or  only 
one  or  two,  for  some  scenes,  and  then  twenty 
lines  or  so  that  are  a  cento  of  them,  carefully 
dovetailed  and  worked  together.  It  is  very  diffi- 
cult to  imagine  a  man  doing  this  from  memory 
or  from  a  book.  But  it  is  exactly  what  would 
happen  if  he  were  using  a  note-book  which  had 
several  consecutive  pages  with  Arcadia  extracts, 
several  more  with  Montaigne,  and  so  on.  The 
passage  I  quoted,  which  brings  together  an  ex- 
tract from  Arcadia,  III.,  and  another  from  Ar- 
cadia, II.,  exemplifies  this.  But  there  are  better 
instances.  The  first  ten  lines  of  The  Duchess  of 
Malfi,  IV.  1  (p.  84),  contain  three  continuous 
more  or  less  verbal  thefts  from  different  parts 
of  the  Arcadia,  the  first  and  third  from  Book  II., 
the  second  from  Book  I.  Better  still;  in  II.  1 
(p.  67) ,  Bosola  has  to  utter  some  profound  "con- 


CHARACTERISTICS  149 

templation,"  worthy  of  his  malcontent  type. 
Webster  could  not  think  of  anything  at  the  mo- 
ment. He  generally  seems  to  have  had  recourse 
to  his  note-book  when  he  was  gravelled ;  for  a  lot 
of  his  borrowed  passages  make  very  little  sense 
as  they  come  in,  and  that  of  a  rather  sudden  na- 
ture, in  the  way  that  generally  betokens  an  in- 
terrupted train  of  thought.  He  went  to  his  note- 
books on  this  occasion.  He  found,  probably  con- 
tiguous there,  several  sentences  of  a  weighty,  dis- 
connected sense.  They  are  from  Montaigne, 
Florio's  translation,  pages  246,  249,  248,  in  that 
order.^  Put  together  they  have,  as  a  matter  of 
fact,  very  little  meaning. 

BosoLA.  "O,  Sir,  the  opinion  of  wisdom  is  a  foul 
tetter  that  runs  all  over  a  man's  body;  if  sim- 
plicity direct  us  to  have  no  evil  it  directs  us  to 
a  happy  being;  for  the  subtlest  folly  proceeds 
from  the  subtlest  wisdom ;  let  me  be  simply  hon- 
est." 

Still,  it  did.  And  being  at  his  Montaigne  note- 
books, Webster  went  on.  Bosola's  next  speech 
but  one  borrows  from  the  first  Book.  For  the 
long  speech  that  follows  it,  he  goes  back  to  Book 
II.;  and  makes  it  entirely  from  two  different 
passages,  one  on  p.  239,  one  on  p.  299. 

A  last  instance  is  still  more  convincing.     It 

*  Professor  Henry  Morley's  reprint. 


150  JOHN  WEBSTER 

concerns  A  Monumental  Column,  lines  23-35, 
and  The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  III.  2  (p.  79),  the 
description  of  Antonio.  The  first  passage  is 
mostly  taken  verbally  from  the  two  sources,  Ben 
Jonson's  Dedication  to  A  Masque  of  Queens  and 
the  description  of  Musidorus  in  Arcadia,  Book  I. 
The  passage  in  the  play  contains  one  of  the 
same  lines  from  Jonson,  together  with  a  different 
part  of  the  sentence  describing  Musidorus,  and 
a  couple  of  lines  from  another  part  of  Arcadia, 
Book  I.  And  the  remainder  of  the  description 
of  Musidorus  duly  turns  up  in  The  Duchess  of 
Malfi  a  few  scenes  later,  in  IV.  1  (p.  84),  sand- 
wiched between  two  passages  from  Arcadia, 
Book  II. 

A  good  many  of  these  passages  Webster  cop- 
ied out  identically,  except  sometimes  for  a  few 
changes  to  make  them  go  into  rough  verse. 
Others  he  altered  in  very  interesting  ways.  It 
was  not  necessarily  part  of  his  goodness  as  an 
author  to  alter  them.  His  genius  comes  out 
equally  in  the  phrases  he  used  to  produce  far 
greater  eff*ect  than  they  do  in  the  original,  by 
putting  them  at  some  exactly  suitable  climax. 
We  are  getting  beyond  the  attitude,  born  of  the 
industrial  age  and  the  childish  enthusiasm  for 
property  as  such,  which  condemns  such  plagiar- 
ism, imitation,  and  borrowing.    The  Elizabethans 


CHARACTERISTICS  151 

had  for  the  most  part  healthy  and  sensible  views 
on  the  subject.  They  practised  and  encouraged 
the  habit.  When  Langbaine,  in  his  preface  to 
Momus  Triumphans,  "condemns  Plagiaries" 
(though  he  is  only  thinking  of  plots,  even  then), 
it  is  a  sign  of  the  decadence  towards  stupidity. 
The  poet  and  the  dramatist  work  with  words, 
ideas,  and  phrases.  It  is  ridiculous,  and  shows 
a  wild  incomprehension  of  the  principles  of  lit- 
erature, to  demand  that  each  should  only  use  his 
own ;  every  man's  brain  is  filled  by  thoughts  and 
words  of  other  people's.  Webster  wanted  to 
make  Bosola  say  fine  things.  He  had  many 
in  his  mind  or  his  note-book :  some  were  borrowed, 
some  his  own.  He  put  them  down,  and  they  an- 
swer their  purpose  splendidly. 

/  "I  stand  like  one 

l/^  That  long  hath  ta'en  a  sweet  and  golden  dream; 
I  am  angry  with  myself,  now  that  I  wake/' 

That  was,  or  may  have  been,  of  his  own  inven- 
tion. 

"The  weakest  arm  is  strong  enough  that  strikes 
With  the  sword  of  justice." 

That  he  had  found  in  Sidney.  There  is  no  dif- 
ference. In  any  case  the  first,  original,  passage 
was  probably  in  part  due  to  his  friends'  influ- 
ence;  and  the  words  he  used  were  originally 


152  JOHN  WEBSTER 

wholly  "plagiarised"  from  his  mother  or  his 
nurse-maid.  "Originality"  is  only  plagiarising 
from  a  great  many. 

So  Webster  reset  other  people's  jewels  and 
redoubled  their  lustre.  "The  soul  must  be  held 
fast  with  one's  teeth  .  .  ."  he  found  Mon- 
taigne remarkably  saying  in  a  stoical  passage. 
The  phrase  stuck.  Bosola,  on  the  point  of  death, 
cries :  ^ 

"Yes  I  hold  my  weary  soul  in  my  teeth; 
'Tis  ready  to  part  from  me." 

It  is  unforgettable. 

Webster  improved  even  Donne,  in  this  way; 
in  a  passage  of  amazing,  quiet,  hopeless  pathos, 
the  parting  of  Antonio  and  the  Duchess  {Duch- 
ess of  Malfi,  III.  5),  which  is  one  long  series  of 
triumphant  borrowings: 

*'We  seem  ambitious  God's  whole  work  to  undo; 
Of  nothing  He  made  us,  and  we  strive  too 
To  bring  ourselves  to  nothing  back," 

Donne  writes  in  An  Anatomy  of  the  World. 

"Heaven  fashion'd  us  of  nothing;  and  we  strive 
To  bring  ourselves  to  nothing," 

are  Antonio's  moving  words. 

*  It  is  only  because  there  are  scores  of  other  certain  borrowings 
of  Webster  from  Montaigne  that  I  accept  this  one.  By  itself  it 
would  not  be  a  convincing  plagiarism. 


CHARACTERISTICS  153 

This  last  example  illustrates  one  kind  of  the 
changes  other  than  metrical  Webster  used  to 
make.  He  generally  altered  a  word  or  two, 
with  an  extraordinarily  sure  touch,  which  proves 
his  genius  for  literature.  He  gave  the  passages 
life  and  vigour,  always  harmonious  with  his  own 
style.  You  see,  by  this  chance  side-light,  the 
poet  at  work,  with  great  vividness.  "Fashion'd" 
for  "made"  here,  is  not  a  great  improvement; 
but  it  brings  the  sentence  curiously  into  the  key 
of  the  rest  of  the  scene.  The  metrical  skill  is 
astounding — the  calm  weight  of  "fashion'd";  the 
slight  tremble  of  "Heaven"  at  the  beginning  of 
the  line;  the  adaptation  from  Donne's  stiff  heavy 
combative  accent,  the  line  ending  with  "and  we 
strive  too,"  to  the  simpler  easier  cadence  more 
suited  to  speech  and  to  pathos,  "...  ;  and  we 
strive";  and  the  repetition  of  "nothing"  in  the 
same  place  in  the  two  lines. 

The  long  first  example  I  gave  of  borrowing 
from  Sidney  gives  good  instances  of  change, 
among  others  the  half-slangy  vividness  of 

"Thou  art  a  fool,  then. 
To  waste  thy  pity  on  a  thing  so  wretched 
As  cannot  pity  itself  ...,'* 

for  Sidney's  mannered,  dim, 

"and  therefore  besought  him  not  to  cast  his 
love  in  so  unfruitful  a  place  as  could  not  love  itself." 


154  JOHN  WEBSTER 

But  the  same  places  in  The  Duchess  of  Malfi 
and  the  Arcadia  have  a  much  finer  example.  The 
description  of  Queen  Erona  is  transferred  to  the 
Duchess  again.  Sidney  says  that  in  her  soitow, 
one  could  "perceive  the  shape  of  loveliness  more 
perfectly  in  woe  than  in  joyfulness."  Webster 
turned  this,  with  a  touch,  to  poetry  in  its  sheerest 
beauty. 

BosoLA.     "You  may  discern  the  shape  of  loveliness 

More  perfect  in  her  tears  than  in  her  smiles." 

It  is  just  this  substitution  of  the  concrete  for 
the  abstract — which  is  the  nearest  one  could  get 
to  a  definition  of  the  difference  between  a  thought 
in  good  prose  and  the  same  thought  in  good 
poetry — that  Webster  excels  in.  Even  where  his 
adjectives  gain,  it  is  in  this  direction. 

"Or  is  it  true  that  thou  wert  never  but  a  vain 
name,  and  no  essential  thing?" 

says  Sidney  in  a  long  passage  on  Virtue.  Web- 
ster makes  it  a  shade  more  visual,  and  twenty 
times  as  impressive: 

"Or  is  it  true  thou  art  but  a  bare  name. 
And  no  essential  thing.'*" 

So  Bosola  gives  life  to  a  meditation  of  Mon- 
taigne.   Montaigne's  democratic  mind  pondered 


CHARACTERISTICS  155 

in  his  study  on  the  essential  equahty  of  men. 
"We  are  deceived,"  he  says  of  princes;  "they  are 
moved,  stirred,  and  removed  in  their  motions  by 
the  same  springs  and  wards  that  we  are  in  ours. 
The  same  reason  that  makes  us  chide  and  brawl 
and  fall  out  with  any  of  our  neighbours,  causeth 
a  war  to  follow  between  princes ;  the  same  reason 
that  makes  us  whip  or  beat  a  lackey  maketh  a 
prince  (if  he  apprehend  it)  to  spoil  and  waste  a 
whole  province.  .  .  ."  Bosola  is  the  heart  of 
democracy.  "They  are  deceived,  there's  the  same 
hand  to  them;  the  like  passions  sway  them;  the 
same  reason  that  makes  a  vicar  to  go  to  law  for 
a  tithe-pig,  and  undo  his  neighbours,  makes  them 
spoil  a  whole  province,  and  batter  down  goodly 
cities  with  the  cannon."  The  tithe-pig  carries 
you  on  to  Parnassus;  Bosola  has  the  vision  of  an 
artist. 

The  liveliness  of  the  "there's"  for  "there  is" 
in  the  last  quotation  is  typical.  Webster,  like  all 
the  great  Elizabethans,  knew  he  was  writing  for 
the  ear  and  not  the  eye.  They  kept  in  close 
touch,  in  their  phrases,  rhythms,  and  turns,  with 
speech.  Their  language  was  greater  than  speech, 
but  it  was  in  that  kind;  it  was  not  literature. 

But  there  is  one  example  of  adoption  and 
adaptation  where  Webster  stands  out  quite  clear 
as  the  poet,  with  the  queer  and  little-known  men- 


156  JOHN  WEBSTER 

tal  processes  of  that  kind  of  man  suddenly 
brought  to  the  hght.    Montaigne  has  a  passage : 

"Forasmuch  as  our  sight,  being  altered,  repre- 
sents unto  itself  things  alike ;  and  we  imagine  that 
things  fail  it  as  it  doth  to  them:  As  they  who 
travel  by  sea,  to  whom  mountains,  fields,  towns, 
heaven,  and  earth,  seem  to  go  the  same  motion, 
and  keep  the  same  course  they  do." 

The  sense  is  clear  and  on  the  surface.  He  is 
illustrating  the  general  rule  by  an  interesting 
instance  from  ordinary  experience.  When  you 
go  in  a  train,  or  a  boat,  the  sky,  the  earth,  and 
its  various  features,  all  seem  to  be  moving  in  one 
direction.^  In  The  White  Devil  Flamineo  is 
tempting  Vittoria  with  the  happiness  Brachiano 
can  give  her. 

"So  perfect  shall  be  thy  happiness,  that,  as  men 
at  sea  think  land  and  trees  and  ships  go  that  way 
they  go,  so  both  heaven  and  earth  shall  seem  to  go 
your  voyage/' 

Webster  took  this  instance  of  Montaigne's  and 
used  it  to  help  out  quite  a  different  sense.  He 
used  it  as  a  simile  of  that  elusive,  unobvious,  im- 
aginative kind  that  illuminates  the  more  that  you 
can  scarcely  grasp  the  point  of  comparison.    But 

*  Note,  though,  that  Montaigne  has  made  a  slip.  They  really 
appear  to  be  moving  in  the  opposite  direction  to  yourself.  Web- 
ster takes  the  idea  over,  mistake  and  all. 


CHARACTERISTICS  157 

he  did  more.  He  was  led  to  it  by  thinking,  as  a 
poet  thinks,  only  half  in  ideas  and  half  in  words. 
Or  rather,  with  ordinary  people,  ideas  lead  to 
one  another,  suggest  one  another,  through  ideas. 
With  poets  they  do  it  through  words,  quite  illogi- 
cally.  The  paths  of  association  in  the  brain  are 
different  in  the  two  cases.  A  word  is  an  idea 
with  an  atmosphere,  a  hard  core  with  a  fringe 
round  it,  like  an  oyster  with  a  beard,  or  Profes- 
sor William  James'  conception  of  a  state  of 
mind.  Poets  think  of  the  fringes,  other  people 
of  the  core  only.  More  definitely,  if  the  diction- 
ary meaning  of  a  word  is  a  and  the  atmosphere 
oc,  the  poet  thinks  of  it  as  (  oo  +  a)^  and  his  trains 
of  thought  are  apt  to  go  on  accordingly.  So 
here,  Webster  found,  vaguely,  "heaven  and 
earth' '  .  .  .  "going  the  same  motion"  .  .  .  and 
he  leapt  to  the  mystical  conception  of  supreme 
happiness.  He  took  "heaven  and  earth"  from 
their  original,  half  material,  significance,  and 
transfigured  them.  He  took  them  from  the  illus- 
tration and  put  them  into  the  thing  illus- 
trated. The  meaning  of  the  original  suggested 
one  thing  to  his  mind,  the  words  another;  he 
combined  them,  in  another  world.  And  the  re- 
sult is  a  simile  of  incomprehensible  appropriate- 
ness and  exquisite  beauty,  an  idea  in  a  Shelleyan 
altitude  where  words  have  various  radiance  rather 


158  JOHN  WEBSTER 

than  meaning,   an  amazing  description  of  the 
sheer  summit  of  the  ecstasy  of  joy. 

The  note-book  habit  suited  those  idiosyncrasies 
of  Webster's  slow-moving  mind  which  distin- 
guished him  from  the  ready  rhetoric  of  Fletcher 
and  the  perpetual  inspiration  of  Shakespeare. 
The  use  of  such  a  thing  by  a  poet  implies  a  dif- 
ference from  other  poets  in  psychology,  not,  as 
is  often  ignorantly  supposed,  in  degree  of  merit. 
It  merely  means  he  has  a  worse  memory.  All 
writers  are  continually  noting  or  inventing 
phrases  and  ideas,  which  form  the  stuff  from 
which  their  later  inspiration  chooses.  Some  have 
to  note  them  down,  else  they  slip  away  for  ever. 
Others  can  note  them  in  their  mind  and  yet  feel 
secure  of  retaining  them.  The  advantage  of  this 
method  is  that  you  unconsciously  transmute  all 
"borrowed"  ideas  to  harmony  with  your  own  per- 
sonality— that  when  you  hunt  them  out  to  re- 
claim them  you  find  them  slightly  changed.  The 
disadvantage,  under  modern  conditions,  is  that 
you  may  conmiit  the  most  terrible  sin  of  plagiar- 
ism, and  lift  another  man's  work,  and  display  it 
in  a  recognisable  form,  without  knowing  it.  So 
Meredith  in  one  of  his  last  and  best  lyrics,  an 
eight-lined  poem  called  "Youth  and  Age,"  re- 
peats a  line  identically  from  Swinburne's  best 
poem,  The  Triumph  of  Time;  and  all  uncon- 


CHARACTERISTICS  159 

sciously.  The  disadvantage  of  the  note-book 
method  is  that  you  have  to  perform  the  operation 
of  digesting  your  trophy,  harmonising  it  with  the 
rest  of  the  work,  on  the  spot.  Webster  does  not 
always  do  this  successfully.  There  are  passages, 
as  we  have  seen,  where  he  too  flagrantly  helps 
himself  along  with  his  note-book.  But  as  a  rule 
he  weaves  in  his  quotations  extraordinarily  well; 
they  become  part  of  the  texture  of  the  play, 
adding  richness  of  hue  and  strength  of  fabric. 
In  The  White  Devil,  in  the  scene  of  astounding 
tragical  farce  where  Flamineo  persuades  Vittoria 
and  Zanche  to  try  to  murder  him  with  bulletles« 
pistols,  the  quotations  from  Montaigne  come  in 
entirely  pat.  For  it  is  not,  generally,  when  the 
play  goes  slowest  that  Webster  has  most  recourse 
to  his  note-book.  The  swift  passion  of  Ferdi- 
nand's interview  with  the  guilty  Duchess  {Duch- 
ess of  Malfi,  III.  2)  is,  if  you  enquire  closely, 
entirely  composed  of  slightly  altered  passages 
from  the  Arcadia,  This  detracts  no  whit  from 
its  tumultuous  force. 

The  chief  value  of  working  through  a  note- 
book, from  a  literary  point  of  view%  is  this.  A 
man  tends  to  collect  quotations,  phrases,  and 
ideas,  that  particularly  appeal  to  and  fit  in  with 
his  own  personality.  If  that  personality  is  a 
strong  one,  and  the  point  of  his  work  is  the 


160  JOHN  WEBSTER 

pungency  with  which  it  is  imbued  with  this  strong 
taste,  the  not  too  injudicious  agglutination  of 
these  external  fragments  will  vastly  enrich  and 
heighten  the  total  effect.  And  this  is,  on  the 
whole,  what  happens  with  Webster.  The  heap- 
ing-up  of  images  and  phrases  helps  to  confuse 
and  impress  the  hearer,  and  gives  body  to  a  taste 
that  might  otherwise  have  been  too  thin  to  carry. 
Webster,  in  fine,  belongs  to  the  caddis-worm 
school  of  writers,  who  do  not  become  their  com- 
plete selves  until  they  are  incrusted  with  a  thou- 
sand orts  and  chips  and  fragments  from  the 
world  around. 

It  would  be  possible  to  go  on  for  a  long  time 
classifying  various  characteristics  of  Webster, 
and  discovering  them  in  different  passages  or 
incidents  in  his  plays.  And  it  would  be  possible, 
too,  to  lay  one's  finger  on  several  natural  reac- 
tions and  permanent  associations  in  that  brain. 
All  have  noticed  his  continual  brooding  over 
death.  He  was,  more  particularly,  obsessed  by 
the  idea  of  the  violence  of  the  moment  of  death. 
Soul  and  body  appeared  to  him  so  interlaced  that 
he  could  not  conceive  of  their  separation  without 
a  struggle  and  pain.  Again,  his  mind  was  al- 
ways turning  to  metaphors  of  storms  and  bad 
weather,  and  especially  the  phenomenon  of  light- 


CHARACTERISTICS  161 

ning.  He  is  for  ever  speaking  of  men  lightening 
to  speech  or  action;  he  saw  words  as  the  flash 
from  the  thunder-cloud  of  wrath  or  passion. 

But,  after  all,  the  chief  characteristic  of  Web- 
ster's two  plays  and  of  many  things  in  those 
plays,  is  that  they  are  good;  and  the  chief  char- 
acteristic of  Webster  is  that  he  is  a  good  drama- 
tist. The  great  thing  about  The  Duchess  of 
Malfi  is  that  it  is  the  material  for  a  superb  play; 
the  great  thing  about  the  fine  or  noble  things  in 
it  is  not  that  they  illustrate  anything  or  belong 
to  any  class,  but,  in  each  case,  the  fine  and  noble 
thing  itself.  All  one  could  do  would  be  to  print 
them  out  at  length ;  and  this  is  no  place  for  that ; 
it  is  easier  to  buy  Webster's  AVorks  (though,  in 
this  scandalous  country,  not  very  easy).  The 
end  of  the  matter  is  that  Webster  was  a  great 
writer;  and  the  way  in  which  one  uses  great 
writers  is  two-fold.  There  is  the  exhilarating 
way  of  reading  their  writing;  and  there  is  the 
essence  of  the  whole  man,  or  of  the  man's  whole 
work,  which  you  carry  away  and  permanently 
keep  with  you.  This  essence  generally  presents 
itself  more  or  less  in  the  form  of  a  view  of  the 
universe,  recognisable  rather  by  its  emotional 
than  by  its  logical  content.  The  world  called 
Webster  is  a  peculiar  one.  It  is  inhabited  by 
people   driven,   like  animals,   and   perhaps  like 


162  JOHN  WEBSTER 

men,  only  by  their  instincts,  but  more  blindly 
and  ruinously.  Life  there  seems  to  flow  into  its 
forms  and  shapes  with  an  irregular  abnormal  and 
horrible  volume.  That  is  ultimately  the  most 
sickly,  distressing  feature  of  Webster's  charac- 
ters, their  foul  and  indestructibLgjotallty.  It  fills 
one  with  tEeTepiHsiorrone  feels  at  the  unending 
soulless  energy  that  heaves  and  pulses  through 
the  lowest  forms  of  life.  They  kill,  love,  torture 
one  another  blindly  and  without  ceasing.  A 
play  of  Webster's  is  full  of  the  feverish  and 
ghastly  turmoil  of  a  nest  of  maggots.  Maggots 
are  what  the  inhabitants  of  this  universe  most 
suggest  and  resemble.  The  sight  of  their  fever 
is  only  alleviated  by  the  permanent  calm,  un- 
friendly summits  and  darknesses  of  the  back- 
ground of  death  and  doom.  For  that  is  equally 
a  part  of  Webster's  universe.  Human  beings 
are  writhing  grubs  in  an  immense  night.  And 
the  night  is  without  stars  or  moon.  But  it  has 
sometimes  a  certain  quietude  in  its  darkness; 
but  not  very  much. 


APPENDICES. 


Appendix  A. — "Appius  and  Virginia" 

[The  original  form  of  this  appendix  was  rearranged 
and  shortened  by  the  author  for  separate  publication 
in  the  Modern  Languages  Remew,  vol.  viii.  No.  4  (Octo- 
ber, 1913).  I  have  here  combined  the  two  versions,  fol- 
lowing the  order  of  the  second,  but  restoring  most  of 
the  passages  which  were  omitted  from  it  to  save  space. 

E.  M.] 


THE  AUTHORSHIP  OF  THE  LATER 
"APPIUS  AND  VIRGINIA."  ' 

It  is  startlingly  obvious,  and  has  been  remarked  by 
every  critic  of  Webster,  that  Appius  and  Virginia  is 
quite  different  from  his  other  plays.  It  "stands  apart 
from  the  other  plays,"  says  Professor  Vaughan.^  Dr. 
Ward  recognises  it  as  a  work  of  Webster's  "later  man- 
hood, if  not  of  his  old  age."  Mr.  Wilham  Archer  vastly 
prefers  it  to  the  ordinary  crude  Websterian  melodrama. 
In  fact,  critics,  whether  of  the  Ehzabethans  in  general 
or  of  Webster  in  particular,  have  always  exhibited 
either  conscious  discomfort  or  unconscious  haste  and 
lack  of  interest,  when  they  came  to  this  play.  As  they 
have  never  questioned  its  authenticity,  their  perfunc- 
tory and  unprofitable  treatment  of  it  is  noteworthy. 
They  cannot  fit  it  in.  In  summing  up  Webster's  charac- 
teristics, they  have  either  quietly  let  it  slide  out  of  sight, 
or  else  brought  it  formally  and  unhelpfully  in,  to  sit 
awkward  and  silent  among  the  rest  like  a  deaf  unpleas- 
ant aunt  at  a  party  of  the  other  side  of  the  family.  But 
never,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  has  anyone  suggested  that 
it  is  not  by  Webster. 

We  may  sympathise  with  the  critics.  The  more 
closely  Appius  and  Virginia  is  looked  at,  the  less  it 
shows  of  the  Webster  we  know.     With  Northward  Ho 

*The  only  other  Appius  and  Virginia  known  is  the  old-fashioned 
lumbering  play  by  "R.  B."  (probably  Richard  Bower)  of  1576. 

a  C.  H.  E.  L.,  vol.  vi,  p.  182. 

165 


166  JOHN  WEBSTER 

and  Westward  Ho,  one  is  not  discomforted  at  finding 
almost  no  such  mark.  You  may  imagine  Webster  a 
young  man,  collaborating  with  an  older,  in  a  well- 
defined,  not  very  congenial,  type  of  play,  contributing 
the  smaller  part.  There  are  a  hundred  reasons  against 
what  we  mean  by  Webster  being  prominent  in  those 
plays.  Anyhow,  a  young  man's  work  is  frequently  any- 
body's ;  especially  his  hack-work.  Who  could  pick  out 
Meredith's  war  correspondence  from  anyone  else's  ?  But 
once  he  has  developed  his  particular  savour,  it  can 
hardly  fade  into  commonness  again.  It  is  as  with  faces. 
You  can  often  mistake  two  young  faces.  But  once  the 
soul  has  got  to  work,  wrinkling  and  individualising  the 
countenance,  it  remains  itself  for  ever,  even  after  the 
soul  has  gone.  The  taste  we  recognise  as  Webster  de- 
veloped between  1607  and  1615.  It  is  a  clinging,  un- 
mistakable one.  Later  on  he  imitated  models  who  pro- 
voked it  less  powerfully.  But  a  close,  long  scrutiny, 
before  which  Appius  and  Virginia  grows  more  cold  and 
strange,  increasingly  reveals  Webster  in  The  Devil's 
Law-Case,  even  in  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold,  of  which  he 
only  wrote  part. 

Examine  Appius  and  Virginia  sesthetically  and  as 
a  whole.  Webster  is  a  dogged,  slow  writer,  and  roman- 
tic— in  the  sense  that  single  scenes,  passages,  or  lines 
have  merit  and  intensity  on  their  own  account.  As  a 
rule,  he  finely  proves  that  quintessence  of  the  faith  that 
the  God  of  Romanticism  revealed  to  his  inattentive 
prophet.  "Load  every  rift  with  ore."  And  there  is  a 
kind  of  dusty  heat  over  all.  Appius  and  Virginia  is 
precisely  the  opposite.  Its  impression  is  simple  and 
cool.     It  seems  more  an  effort  at  classicism — uncon- 


APPENDICES  167 

scious  perhaps.  There  are  not  many  lines  or  images 
you  stop  over.  You  see  right  to  the  end  of  the  road. 
It  is,  of  course,  a  very  poor  argument  against  at- 
tributing a  play  to  any  particular  author,  that  he  has 
not  written  this  kind  of  play  elsewhere.  The  very  fact 
that  he  hasn't,  makes  it  all  the  harder  to  know  what 
his  attempt  in  this  manner  would  be  like.  And  when 
such  an  argument  is  used,  as  it  is,  to  prove  that  A 
Yorkshire  Tragedy  is  not  Shakespeare's,  it  is  of  no 
value,  though  it  may  be  on  the  right  side.  What  is 
permissible,  however,  is,  when  a  writer  has  several  dis- 
tinct characteristics,  to  expect  to  recognise  some  of 
them,  when  he  is  seriously  attempting  a  kind  of  play 
not  very  different  from  his  ordinary  one ;  especially  if 
these  characteristics  are  of  certain  kinds.  A  mere  jour- 
nalist, turning  out  his  daily  task,  may  sometimes  write 
an  indistinguishable  undistinguished  play  in  a  different 
style.  A  great  master  of  a  certain  type  may  possibly^ 
his  tongue  just  perceptibly  bulging  the  cheek,  flash  out 
something  quite  good  in  an  entirely  other  kind,  as  a  tour 
de  force.  Or  a  very  brilliant  and  not  at  all  serious  per- 
son, with  a  trick  of  writing,  some  Grceculus  of  literature, 
may  sink  his  own  personality  entirely  in  the  manner  of 
another.  But  that  is  only  possible  if  he  is  able  to  aim 
entirely  at  parody,  and  not  at  all  at  art.  Few  artists 
could  ever  do  this.  In  any  case,  Webster  and  Appms 
and  Virginia  do  not  fit  into  any  of  these  potential  ex- 
planations. He  worked  (as  he  tells  us,  and  we  can  see) 
slowly  and  with  trouble.  Both  his  method  and  the  result 
show  that  he  was  no  easily  adaptable  writer.  His 
clumsy,  individual,  passionate  form  betrays  itself  under 
borrowed  clothes.    This  does  not  mean  that  he  strode 


168  JOHN  WEBSTER 

always  intensely  and  unswervingly  along  his  own  path. 
He  was,  in  an  odd  way,  ready  enough  to  put  on  other 
people's  clothes  that  did  not  suit  him.  But  they. never 
fitted  all  over.  It  is  suggested  that  in  Appius  and  Vir- 
ginia he  was  trying  to  imitate  Shakespeare's  Roman 
tragedies.  This  might  explain  the  absence  of  some  of 
his  peculiarities,  and  the  presence  of  other  marks  ;  the 
change  of  atmosphere,  the  greater  number  of  rhyming 
lines,  and  so  forth.  But  subtler  questions  of  metre  and 
vocabulary  go  deeper,  in  proportion  as  they  are  more 
unconscious.  Consideration  of  such  delicate  points,  to- 
gether with  a  careful  general  aesthetic  tasting  of  the 
whole  play,  seem  to  me  to  warrant  a  very  strong  critical 
doubt  whether  Webster  wrote  Appius  and  Virginia. 

The  characters  of  the  play  are  slight  and  ordinary. 
The  clown  is  quite  unlike  anything  we  could  expect  Web- 
ster to  invent.  Appius,  the  Machiavellian  villain,  has  a 
little  fire.  Virginius  is  a  mere  stage-creature,  and,  as 
that,  quite  creditable.  Virginia  is  a  virgin.  The  crowd 
of  soldiers  is  a  soldiers'  crowd.  Webster's  characters, 
in  other  plays,  if  they  do  not  always  (compared  at  least 
with  Shakespeare's)  make  a  highly  individual  impres- 
sion on  the  mind,  always  leave  a  dent. 

The  metre  of  Appius  and  Virginia  is  not  Webster's. 
The  blank  verse  is  much  stricter.  Webster's  loose,  im- 
pressionistic iambics,  with  their  vague  equivalence  and 
generous  handling,  are  very  unlike  these  regular,  rhe- 
torical lines.  Webster's  great  characteristic  of  begin- 
ning a  line  with  what  classical  prosodists  would  call 
an  anapaest  finds  no  place  here.  And  the  general  metri- 
cal technique  of  which  this  is  only  the  most  obvious 
manifestation — the  continual  use  of  substitution  and 


APPENDICES  169 

equivalence  in  the  feet,  or,  better,  the  thinking  more  in 
lines  and  less  in  feet  ^ — is  strikingly  absent  in  Appms 
and  Virginia.  These  prosodic  habits  are  also  almost  as 
little  prominent  in  the  possibly  Websterian  part  of 
A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold.  But  there  is  another  point 
which  marks  Appius  and  Virginia  off  from  all  the  rest. 
In  the  other  plays,  there  is  little  attempt  to  keep  a  line 
that  is  divided  between  two  speakers  pentametrical.  If 
one  speech  ends  with  a  line  of  two  and  a  half  feet,  the 
next  may  begin  with  a  line  of  two  feet,  or  of  three,  or 
with  a  complete  line.  Appius  and  Virginia  keeps  al- 
most invariably  to  the  old  tradition,  by  which  the 
speeches  dovetail  perfectly.^ 

The  first  and  almost  the  only  characteristic  in  this 
play  to  strike  a  casual  reader,  is  the  vocabulary.  It 
is  full  of  rare  Latin  words,  mostly  wearing  an  air  of 
recent  manufacture;  "to  deject"  (in  a  literal  sense), 
"munition,"  "invasive,"  "devolved,"  "donative," 
"palped,"  "enthronised,"  "torved,"  "strage,"  and 
many  more.  This  particular  vocabulary  is  a  mark  of 
certain  writers,  especially  of  the  period  at  the  end  of 
the  sixteenth   and  beginning  of  the   seventeenth   cen- 

^E.  g.  Duchess  of  Malfi,  III.  2: 

"Did  you  ever  in  your  life  know  an  ill  painter 
Desire  to  have  his  dwelling  next  door  to  the  shop 
Of  an  excellent  picture  maker?" 
'  For  the  perplexing  metrical  part  which  Apj)ius  and  Virginia 
plays,  see  the  metrical  table  on  p.  190  of  Dr.  Stoll's  John  Webster. 
Its  resemblance  to  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  is  only  in  some  direc- 
tions, and  more  statistical  than  real.     The  metre  of  both  is  rather 
smooth;   but  in   a  very   different  way.     It   is,  of  course,   rather 
risky  to  lay  much  emphasis  on  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold:  it  may  have 
been  worked  over  by  Rowley. 


170  JOHN  WEBSTER 

turies,  which  had  a  joyous  fertility  in  inventing  new 
words  that  soon  drooped  and  grew  sterile.  It  was 
mostly  employed  by  the  slightly  classicist  authors.  Of 
the  major  dramatists,  Ben  Jonson  had  a  touch  of  it; 
Marston,  Heywood,  Chapman,  and  Shakespeare  show 
it  chiefly.  Shakespeare  has  this  variety  among  all  his 
other  varieties,  neologisms,  and  airai  Xeyofxeva:  Chap- 
man and  Heywood  this  in  especial. 

In  this  and  every  notable  respect  the  language  of 
Appius  and  Virginia  is  unlike  Webster's.  Whatever 
linguistic  point  of  detail  you  choose,  the  lack  of  re- 
semblance is  obvious.  To  take  one  instance:  Dr.  Stoll 
(p.  40),  in  trying  to  prove  the  Webster  authorship  of 
the  major  part  of  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckoldy  uses  as  a  test 
the  occurrence  of  the  exclamation  "Ha !"  especially  as 
comprehending  a  whole  speech.  He  says  it  is  unusually 
frequent  in  Webster.  "It  appears  in  The  White  Devil 
thirteen  times,  six  of  them  being  whole  speeches;  in 
Malfi  ten  times,  two  of  them  whole  speeches;  in  the 
Law-Case  nine  times,  four  of  them  whole  speeches;  in 
Appius  and  Virginia  twice ;  in  the  main  plot  of  the  Cure 
for  a  Cuckold  seven  times,  two  of  them  whole  speeches." 
The  oddness  of  the  Appius  and  Virginia  figures  does 
not  strike  Dr.  Stoll,  who  is  on  other  business.  He  ex- 
plains them,  vaguely,  by  "the  frigidity  and  academic 
character  of  the  play";  which  is  far  from  fair  to  the 
slightly  Marlovian  and  "Machiavellian"  nature  of  much 
of  Appius  and  Virginia.  It  is  not  a  Jonsonian  Roman 
play.    There  is  no  reason  why  Appius  should  not  have 


APPENDICES  171 

said  "Ha!"  thirteen  times,  six  of  tliem  whole  speeches, 
except  that  the  author  did  not  write  like  that. 

Again,  the  word  "foul"  was,  characteristically,  a 
common  one  with  Webster.  It  occurs  often  in  The 
White  Devil,  on  almost  every  page  in  The  Duchess  of 
Malfi.  "Think  on  your  cause,"  says  Contarino  to 
Ercole  in  The  DeviVs  Law-Case,  II.  2 ;  "It  is  a  won- 
drous foul  one."  And  when  the  real  "devil's  law-case" 
comes  on  (IV.  S),  the  shameless  Winifred  desires, 
"Question  me  in  Latin,  for  the  cause  is  very  foul." 
There  was  this  habit  in  Webster  of  thinking  of  such 
moral  rottenness  as  "foul,"  slightly  materialising  it.  A 
reader  would  feel  safe  in  betting  that  Webster  would 
use  the  word  several  times  in  connection  with  the  trial 
of  Virginia.  One  knows  his  comment  on  it,  as  one 
knows  how  a  friend  will  take  a  piece  of  news.  The 
word  does  not  occur  in  this  passage. 

Analysis  might  find  a  thousand  more  points,  positive 
and  negative,  in  which  the  style  and  vocabulary  of 
Appius  and  Virginia  are  obviously  not  those  of  Web- 
ster. The  dissimilarity  becomes  still  more  obvious 
when  the  language  is  unanalytically  tasted  as  a  whole. 
It  is  throughout  rhetorical  and  easy,  with  a  slight 
permanent  artificiality.  The  style  is  rather  imitative 
of  Shakespeare's,  and  alive,  but  not  kicking. 

In  the  general  construction  and  handling  of  the 
play  there  is  an  un-Websterian  childishness  and  crud- 
ity. Webster  could  be  gauche  enough  at  times,  but 
not  in  this  shallow,  easy  way.  I  need  only  enumerate 
some  of  the  instances. 


172  JOHN  WEBSTER 

The  Elizabethans  were  splendidly  unsubservient  to 
time.  But  the  better  dramatists  tended  to  conceal  their 
freedom;  Webster  among  them.  The  keenest-witted 
spectator  of  A  Midsummer  Niglifs  Dream  or  The  Mer- 
chant of  Venice  could  not,  unless  he  were  looking  for 
them,  discern  the  tricks  Shakespeare  has  played  with 
time.  The  instance  in  Appius  and  Virginia  is  far  more 
flagrant,  though  it  might  strike  an  Elizabethan  less 
than  us.  Act  V.  scene  3  takes  place  in  the  prison. 
Icilius,  seeing  Virginius  relent  towards  Appius,  vanishes 
to  fetch  the  body  of  Virginia.  Seven  lines  after  his 
exit,  a  shout  is  heard.  It  turns  out  that  in  this  time 
Icilius  has  gone  through  the  streets  to  where  Virginia 
is  lying,  taken  up  the  body,  and  started  back  through 
the  streets  carrying  it;  and  the  people  have  begun  to 
make  an  uproar.  Eleven  lines  later,  Icilius  enters  with 
the  body.  If  the  play  stands  as  it  was  written,  it  is 
difficult  to  believe  that  Webster  could  have  committed 
such  absurdities.  They  might  possibly,  but  not  prob- 
ably, be  explained  by  a  theory,  for  which  there  is  other 
evidence,  that  we  have  the  play  in  a  cut  and  revised 
state.*  But  nothing  can  be  thought  too  childish  to 
come  from  the  author  of  the  crowd-effects  in  Act  II.  2, 
where  the  First  Soldier  asks : 

Soldiers,  shall  I  relate  the  grievances 
Of  the  whole  regiment? 

You  might  expect  Omnes  to  answer  "Yes !"  or  "No !" 
if  they  were  all  agreed.     It  is  too  startling  when,  with 

^  See  page  200. 


APPENDICES  173 

one  voice,  they  cry  "Boldly !"  But  a  more  amazing  in- 
stance of  sympathy  and  intelligence  follows.  The  First 
Soldier  ends  a  piece  of  rhetoric  with: 

from  thence  arise 
A  plague  to  choke  all  Rome ! 
Omnes.     And  all  the  suburbs ! 

There  is  a  childishness  that  goes  deeper,  in  the  hand- 
ling of  the  plot  and  episodes.  It  is  all  told  with  a 
forthright  and  unthinking  simplicity  that  is  quite  dif- 
ferent from  any  Chapmanesque  stark  directness;  the 
simplicity  of  a  child  who  wants  to  tell  a  story,  not  of 
an  artist  who  grasps  the  whole.  It  is  apparent  in  the 
soliloquies  of  II.  1,  in  the  end  of  I.  3,  and  especially  at 
the  beginning  of  the  same  scene,  in  the  interview  be- 
tween Marcus  and  Appius.  Appius  is  melancholy, 
declares  himself  in  love.  Marcus  asks  with  whom,  offer- 
ing to  act  pander.     Appius  tells  him,  Virginia. 

Marcus.     Virginia's ! 

Appius.     Hers. 

Marcus.  I  have  already  found 

An  easy  path  which  you  may  safely  tread. 

Yet  no  man  trace  you. 

He  goes  on  to  explain  in  detail  his  rather  elaborate 
plan. 

It  is  difficult  to  imagine  dramatic  innocence  of  this 
kind  coming  from  Webster,  whose  humour  and  bizarrerie 
are,  if  not  always  successful,  always  entirely  conscious, 
and  whose  simplicity,  as  playwright,  is  rather  archais- 
tic  than  childish. 


174  JOHN  WEBSTER 

These  are  some  of  the  immediate  difficulties  in  be- 
lieving Appius  and  Virginia  to  be  by  Webster.  The 
further  difficulties  of  explaining  the  nature  and  date 
of  the  play,  if  it  is  by  him,  strengthen  our  incredulity. 
How  Webster  came  to  write  such  a  play,  his  various 
critics  and  commentators  have  not  tried  to  ex- 
plain; chiefly  because  they  have  not  understood  that 
there  was  any  need  of  explanation.  They  have  realised 
neither  how  astonishing  a  tour  de  force  it  is,  for  an 
author  so  completely  to  sink  his  personality,  nor  that 
Webster  is  the  last  man  to  be  capable  of  such  a  feat. 
The  dumb  evidence  of  their  inability  to  make  this  play 
fit  in  with  or  illuminate  the  rest  of  Webster's  work, 
speaks  for  them.  When  Webster  wrote  it,  is  a  ques- 
tion they  have  tried  to  answer,  however  dimly.  Their 
answers  have  all  been  different,  and  all  importantly  un- 
convincing. In  the  first  place,  the  whole  style  of  the 
play,  in  plot,  characterisation,  and  metre,  suggests  an 
early  date,  somewhere  between  1595  and  1615;  and 
joins  it,  loosely,  with  Julius  Ccesar  (1601?),  Coriolanus 
(1608?)  and  Heywood's  The  Rape  of  Lucrece  (1604?). 
This  is  especially  to  be  remarked  of  the  metre,  which 
is  rather  formal,  without  being  stiff.  It  has  few 
"equivalences,"  that  is  to  say,  the  lines  have  nearly 
always  ten  (or,  if  "feminine,"  eleven)  syllables.  The 
licences  are  regular.  They  mostly  consist  of  a  few 
limited  cases  in  which  elision  occurs,  always  noticeably, 
and  almost  conventionally — the  chief  example  is  be- 
tween "to"  and  a  verb  beginning  with  a  vowel.^  I  have 
*  E.  g.  "To  obey,  my  lord,  and  to  know  how  to  rule  .  .  ." 


APPENDICES  175 

already  noticed  the  metrical  dovetailing  of  speeches. 
All  these  prosodic  characteristics  suit,  some  rather 
demand,  a  date  between  1600  and  1610.  So  does  the 
influence  of  Marlowe  and  Machiavellism,  and  the  char- 
acter of  the  clown,  Corbulo,  who  is  staringly  introduced 
into  the  original  story.  Finally,  the  general  and  spe- 
cific dissimilarity  in  style  of  Appius  and  Virginia  and 
Webster's  other  plays  forbids  a  middle  date,  and  re- 
quires an  early  rather  than  a  late  one,  if  the  play  be 
his.  Only  a  young  hand  could  have  disguised  its  indi- 
viduality so  completely. 

The  other  evidence,  however,  points  in  precisely  the 
opposite  direction.  When  you  try  to  suggest  a  possi- 
ble date  you  meet  bewildering  difficulties.  One  of  the 
most  certain  things  about  Appius  and  Virginia  is  that 
it  is  strongly  influenced  by  Shakespeare's  Roman  plaj^s, 
and  especially  by  Coriolanus}  Coriolanus  is  dated  by 
most  critical  opinion  as  1608-9.  So  Appius  and  Vir- 
gvnia  must  be  at  least  as  late  as  1609.  But  that  is 
definitely  in  Webster's  middle,  most  individual,  period. 
The  White  Devil  appeared  in  1611,  and  he  was  con- 
fessedly a  long  time  in  writing  it.  If  the  author  of  The 
White  Devil  wrote  Appius  and  Virginia,  it  cannot  have 
been  only  a  year  or  eighteen  months  before.  Then 
again  you  cannot  slip  the  Roman  play  amazingly  be- 
tween The  White  Devil  and  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  (c. 
1613).  It  would  be  far  easier  to  say  that  Shakespeare 
wrote  Titus  Andronicus  between  As  You  Like  It  and 

*  StoU,  pp.  193-197,  illustrates  this  fully  enough.    A  single  read- 
ing of  the  play  will  prove  it. 


176  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Twelfth  Night.  And  you  must  leave  a  decent  interval 
after  The  Duchess  of  Malfi.  You  feel  inclined  to  drop 
it  quietly  in  the  vacant  space  between  The  Duchess  of 
Malfi  and  The  DeviVs  Law-Case.  But  the  progression 
in  style  here  is  so  clear  and  gradual  that  it  is  nearly 
as  difficult  to  squeeze  it  in  there  as  between  the  trage- 
dies. Besides,  if  you  get  as  late  as  1617  or  1618,  you 
may  as  well  listen  to  Dr.  Stoll's  evidence — that  it  is 
not  mentioned  in  Webster's  dedication  to  The  DeviVs 
Law-Case  (printed  1623),  and  that  it  shows  such  close 
debts  to  Shakespeare  that  Webster  must  have  written 
if  after  reading  the  First  Folio  (1623).  So,  bufFeted 
and  confused,  you  take  refuge  in  his  spacious  "1623- 
1639";  a  date  which  is  in  direct  opposition  to  all  your 
first  conclusions.  And  if  you  want  to  adorn  the  affair, 
now  you  have  settled  it,  with  the  circumstance  and 
charm  of  reality,  you  may  attribute,  with  Dr.  Stoll, 
not  only  Webster's  style  and  handling  to  his  study  of 
the  First  Folio,  but  his  Marlowe  characteristics  to  his 
recent  study  of  The  Massacre  at  Paris  (1593)  pre- 
paratory to  writing  his  own  play  The  Guise,  his  clown 
to  his  friendship  with  Heywood,  his  strange  style  to  his 
imitativeness  of  the  fashion  of  his  time,  and  his  writing 
this  sort  of  play  at  all  to  his  fancy  for  going  back  to 
the  fashions  of  twenty  or  thirty  years  earlier! 


II 


Well  then,  what  reasons  are  there  for  thinking  that 
Webster  did  write  Appius  and  Virginia?     The  reasons 


APPENDICES  177 

are  two — the  attribution  in  1654,  and  repetitions  or 
parallels  between  Webster's  other  plays  and  this.  They 
require  examination. 

Appius  and  Virginia  was  printed  and  published  in 
1654,  as  by  John  Webster.  The  same  edition  was  put 
forth  in  1659  with  a  new  title-page  "Printed  for  Hum- 
phrey Moseley";^  and  again  in  1679,  "Acted  at  the 
Duke's  Theatre  under  the  name  of  The  Roman  Virgin 
or  Unjust  Judge.''  It  is  possible  that  Moseley  only 
took  over  the  edition  between  1654  and  1659.  In  that 
case  the  attribution  has  even  less  weight.  But  let 
us  put  it  at  its  strongest  and  suppose  (what  is  most 
probable)  that  Moseley  was  always  the  publisher.  It 
is  being  realised  more  and  more  how  little  importance 
attributions  of  the  second  half  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury have.  The  theatrical  traditions  had  been  broken. 
Publishers  attributed  by  guess-work,  or  hearsay,  or  to 
sell  the  book.  In  1661,  Kirkman  pubHshed  The  Thra- 
cian  Wonder  as  by  Webster  and  Rowley.  "No  one," 
says  Professor  Vaughan,  "except  the  editor,  has  ever 
supposed  that  Webster  can  have  had  a  hand  in  it." 
Yet  it  is  as  Websterian  as  Appius  and  Virginia.  The 
truth  is,  critics  have  at  the  back  of  their  minds  an 
idea  that  good  poets  write  good  poetry,  and  bad  poets 
write  bad  poetry.  Since  this  is  as  far  as  they  can  get, 
they  are  ready  to  give  any  good  poem  or  play  to  any 

*  For  Moseley  and  his  activities,  v.  Dictionary  of  National  Biog- 
raphy; Plomer,  Dictionary  of  Booksellers  and  Printers,  1641-1667; 
Masson,  Life  of  Milton,  iii.  448-457,  vi.  352;  Parrott,  Tragedies 
of  Chapman,  p.  683;  Malone,  Variorvm  Shakespeare,  iii.  229. 


178  JOHN  WEBSTER 

good  poet,  and  to  refuse  any  bad  one.  Appius  and 
Virginia  being  a  fairly  good  play,  there  is  no  reason 
in  the  world  why  it  should  not  be  the  work  of  Webster, 
who  was  a  good  writer.  The  Thraciam  Wonder,  a  bad 
play,  could  not  possibly  be  from  that  hand.  .  .  .  The 
truth  is  very  different.  In  actuality,  a  good  poet  or 
playwright  tends  to  write  good  and  bad  things  in  his 
own  style.  An  examination  of  the  works  of  poets  we 
can  be  sure  about — Keats,  or  Shelley,  or  Swinburne — 
shows  this.  The  author  of  the  sonnet  On  first  looking 
into  Chapman's  Homer  and  the  Ode  to  a  Nighti/ngale 
also  wrote  the  sonnets  To  my  Brother  George  and  to 
G.A.W.  If  the  work  of  a  century  ago  were  largely 
anonymous  or  doubtful,  and  if  the  principles  of  Eliza- 
bethan criticism  were  applied,  he  might  be  given  Alastor 
or  The  Vision  of  Judgement;  he  would  certainly  be 
robbed  of  the  sonnets  to  George  Keats  and  Georgiana 
Wylie. 

Humphrey  Moseley  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  one 
of  the  more  trustworthy  publishers  of  the  time.  Ma- 
lone  and  Professor  Parrott  are  too  hard  on  him.  But 
he  had  the  faults  and  ignorance  of  his  period.  Among 
other  attributions  he  gives  The  Merry  Devil  of  Edmon- 
ton to  Shakespeare,  The  Parliament  of  Love  (Massin- 
ger)  to  Rowley,  The  Faithful  Friends  to  Beaumont  and 
Fletcher,  Alphonsus,  Emperor  of  Germany  to  Chap- 
man, The  Widow  (Middleton)  to  Jonson,  Fletcher, 
and  Middleton,  Henry  I  and  Henry  II  (Davenport, 
probably)   to   Shakespeare   and  Davenport,   and   The 


APPENDICES  179 

History  of  King  Stephen^  Duke  Humphrey,  and  Iphis 
and  lantha  to  Shakespeare. 

Webster's  works  have,  in  one  way  .and  another,  been 
pietty  thoroughly  scrutinised  for  parallels.  Resem- 
blances in  phrasing  and  thought  between  The  White 
Devil,  The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  The  DeviVs  Law-Case,  and 
A  Monumental  Column  are  very  numerous.  A  Cure 
for  a  Cuckold  and  Appius  and  Virginia  are  far  less 
closely  joined.  In  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  there  are  cer- 
tain minor  echoes  of  phrase  that  have  some  weight. 
I  give  a  list  of  the  only  connections  of  Appius  and  Vir- 
ginia with  the  other  plays  that  have  been  discovered 
previously,  or  that  I  have  found.^ 

(a)  Appius  and  Virginia,  149: 

I  have  seen  children  oft  eat  sweetmeats  thus. 
As  fearful  to  devour  them: 

Duchess  of  Malfi,  65 : 

I  have  seen  children  oft  eat  sweetmeats  thus, 
As  fearful  to  devour  them  too  soon. 

(&)  A.  and  v.,  151: 

One  whose  mind 
Appears  more  like  a  ceremonious  chapel 
Full  of  sweet  music,  than  a  thronging  presence. 

Duchess  of  Malfi,  79 : 

His  breast  was  filled  with  all  perfection, 
And  yet  it  seemed  a  private  whispering-room 
It  made  so  little  noise  of  't. 
*The  references  are  all  by  the  pages  of  Dyce's  one-volume  edi- 
tion. 


180  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Monvmental  Column,  11.  78,  79: 

Who  had  his  breast  instated  with  the  choice 
Of  virtues,  though  they  made  no  ambitious  noise. 

(c)  A.  and  F.,  163: 

Virginia.     But  she  hath  a  matchless  eye.  Sir. 
CoRBULo.     True,  her  eyes  are  no  right  matches. 

White  Demi,  31 : 

Brachiano.     Are  not  those  matchless  eyes  mine? 
ViTTORiA.  I  had  rather 

They  were  not  matches.^ 

{d)  A.  and  v.,  165: 

I  only  give  you  my  opinion, 
I  ask  no  fee  for  't. 

Westward  Ho!  242: 

Take  my  counsel:     I'll  ask  no  fee  for  *t. 
White  Devil  7: 

This  is  my  counsel  and  I'll  ask  no  fee  for  't. 

{e)  A,  and  v.,  168: 

As  aconitum,  a  strong  poison,  brings 

A  present  cure  against  all  serpents'  stings. 

White  Devil,  26 : 

Physicians,  that  cure  poisons,  still  do  work 
With  counter-poisons. 
*  Quarto  reading.     Dyce  reads  "matchless":  obviously  wrongly. 


APPENDICES  181 

(/)  A,  and  v.,  171: 

I  vow  this  is  a  practised  dialogue: 
Comes  it  not  rarely  off? 

Duchess  of  Malfl,  63 : 

I  think  this  speech  between  you  both  was  studied. 
It  came  so  roundly  off. 

(g)  A.  andV,,  172: 

For  we  wot 
The  Office  of  a  Justice  is  perverted  quite 
When  one  thief  hangs  another.^ 

Duchess  of  Malfi,  90: 

The  office  of  justice  is  perverted  quite 
When  one  thief  hangs  another. 

(h)  A.  and  F.,  180: 

Death  is  terrible 
Unto  a  conscience  that's  oppressed  with  guilt! 

Duchess  of  Malfi,  99 : 

How  tedious  is  a  guilty  conscience! 

(0  A.  and  F.,  173: 

I  have  sung 
With  an  unskilful,  yet  a  willing  voice, 
To  bring  my  girl  asleep. 

*So  Quarto.  Dyce  thinks  this  a  mistake  for  "The  office  of  jus- 
tice. .  .  ."  as  in  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  quotation.  He  is  probably 
right. 


182  JOHN  WEBSTER 

White  DevU,  45 : 

I'll  tie  a  garland  here  about  his  head; 
'Twill  keep  my  boy  from  lightning. 

Besides  these,  there  are  various  words:  "dunghill" 
(A.  and  v.,  171,  166,  White  Devil,  25),  "mist"  (of  ig- 
norance) (A.  and  F.,  167,  170,  White  Devil,  50  i)  are 
favourite  and  typical  words  of  Webster.  Note  also 
"pursenet"  in  the  sense  of  "wile"  (A.  and  F.,  170, 
DeviVs  Law-Case,  130)  and  "not-being"  {A.  and  F., 
180,  Duchess  of  Malfl,  90). 

Of  the  resemblances,  (c)  is  a  common  joke,  (e)  a, 
common  idea  (the  Ben  Jonson,  Sejanus,  quotation 
which  Dyce  gives  in  a  note  is  much  nearer  than  the 
passage  from  the  White  Devil  to  the  A.  and  F.  quo- 
tation), and  (d)  sounds  like  a  catch-phrase.  In  (h) 
the  two  examples  occur  near  the  end  of  their  pla3^s, 
and  slightly  recall  each  other  in  atmosphere.  In  (i) 
the  same  effect  of  tenderness  is  got  by  the  word  "my." 

It  seems  to  me  that  (6),  a  suggestion  of  Mr.  Craw- 
ford's, holds  good  only  between  The  Duchess  of  Malfi 
and  A  Monumental  Column. 

These  six  examples  are  such  that  they  would  be 
important  if  they  were  ten  or  fifteen  times  as  numer- 
ous;  being  so  few  they  are  of  no  account.  And  I  do 
not  think  many  more  could  be  found. 

The  rest,  (a),  (/)  and  (g),  are  another  matter.  It 
is  to  be  noted  that  (a)  and  (g)  are  exactly  the  sort 

*  Especially  the  similarity  between  "in  a  mist,"  A.  and  V.,  167, 
and  "in  a  mist,"  White  Devil,  50. 


APPENDICES  188 

of  images  and  proverbial  sayings  (note  the  expression 
"we  wot")  that  Webster  and  others  collected.  If  Web- 
ster wrote  Appius  and  Virginia,  we  can  only  say  that 
he  must  have  used  the  same  note-book  that  he  wrote 
The  Duchess  of  Malfi  with.  If  not,  either  the  author 
of  Appius  and  Virginia  compiled  his  note-book  out  of 
The  Duchess  of  Malfi  among  other  books ;  or  else  they 
used  common  sources.  (/)  is  an  even  more  significant 
parallel.  For  the  circumstances  are  similar.  In  each 
drama  two  "villains"  play  into  each  other's  hands  in 
a  dialogue  which  the  "hero"  discerns,  suddenly,  or 
guesses,  to  have  been  rehearsed.  It  is  not  an  obvious 
thought.  That  it  should  be  expressed  at  all  is  note- 
worthy ;  that  it  should  be  expressed  with  such  similarity 
of  phrase  and  (which  is  important)  metrical  setting, 
is  a  valuable  proof  of  identity  of  authorship. 

The  words  have  little  weight.  The  use  of  "mist"  is 
striking;  but  "dunghill,"  though  it  irresistibly  recalls 
Webster's  manner,  was  not  monopolised  by  him;  and 
"not-being"  (the  repetition  of  which  Dr.  Stoll  seems 
to  think  remarkable)  is  not  rare  enough  or  typical 
enough  to  be  of  any  significance. 

There  the  proofs  of  Webster's  authorship  end.  The 
attribution  of  a  late  publisher,  which  is  evidence  of  a 
notoriously  untrustworthy  character,  and  three  or 
four  passages  of  repetition  or  resemblance — that  is  all. 
The  conclusion,  for  any  impartial  mind,  is  that  there 
is  very  little  evidence  of  the  play  being  Webster's, 
rather  more   for  his   having  had   a  finger  in   it,   but 


184  JOHN  WEBSTER 

much  stronger  evidence  still  that  he  had  practically 
nothing  to  do  with  it. 

Ill 

If  that  is  all  there  is  to  be  said,  we  are  left  with  an 
impression  of  general  confusion,  and  a  strongish  feel- 
ing that  anyhow  Webster  is  responsible  for  very  little 
of  the  play. 

But  the  question  would  be  cleared,  if  anyone  dis- 
covered a  more  promising  candidate.  This  I  believe 
I  have  done.  I  think  I  can  show  that  Appius  and 
Virginia  is  largely,  or  entirely,  the  work  of  Thomas 
Heywood.  I  shall  give  the  direct  proofs  first:  then 
the  more  indirect  ones,  by  showing  how  his  authorship 
fits  in  with  the  various  facts  that  have  made  such  havoc 
of  Webster's  claims. 

I  have  mentioned  the  queer  distinctive  vocabulary, 
especially  of  Latin  words,  used  in  Appius  and  Vir- 
ginia. The  fact  that  Heywood  uses  a  very  similar 
vocabulary,  especially  in  all  his  more  classical  works, 
would  of  itself  be  of  little  weight.  But  an  individual 
examination  of  all  the  very  unusual  words  and  phrases 
in  this  play,  together  with  a  hurried  scrutiny  of  Hey- 
wood's  dramas,  provides  very  startling  results.  I  give 
a  list.  More  minute  search,  no  doubt,  might  largely 
increase  it.  It  serves  its  purpose.  I  begin  with  the 
more  striking  words. ^ 

*  The  references  to  Heywood's  plays  are  to  the  pages  of  the  six- 
volume  Pearson  edition,  1874, 


APPENDICES  185 

A.  and  v.,  179: 

Redeem  a  base  life  with  a  noble  death. 
And    through    your    lust-burnt   veins    confine    youi 
breath. 

"Confine,"  in  this  sense  of  "banish,"  was  very  rare. 
The  N.E.D.  gives  one  more  or  less  contemporary  ex- 
ample from  Holinshcd,  and  one,  the  only  one,  from 
Shakespeare.  Dyce,  in  a  footnote,  gives  five  passages ; 
he  comments,  "it  is  somewhat  remarkable  that  they  are 
all  from  Heywood."  I  can  add  two.  It  was  a  very 
special  word  of  Heywood's. 

Pleasant  Dialogues,  ii.  p.  115: 

The  soul  confine. 
The  body's  dead,  nor  canst  thou  call  it  thine 

Royal  King  and  Loyal  Subject,  82: 

Which  as  your  gift  I'll  keep,  till  Heaven  and  Nature 

Confine  it  hence. 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  the  context  in  these  two  ex- 
amples is  similar. 

Other  examples  are  in  The  Golden  Age,  23,  Th£  Rape 
of  Lucrece,  242,  A  Challenge  for  Beauty,  10,  The 
Brazen  Age,  199,  VwaiKetoVj  iv,  207. 

A,  and  V„  174: 

If  the  general's  heart  be  so  obdure. 

"Obdure"  is  a  very  rare  word.  It  does  not  occur  in 
Shakespeare.     In  the  Elizabethan  age  it  seems  to  have 


186  JOHN  WEBSTER 

been  used  only  by  one  or  two  religious  writers  and 
Heywood.  Heywood  is  always  using  it.  This  word 
alone  might  almost  be  accepted  as  a  proof  that  the 
passage  it  occurs  in  was  by  him. 

"Obdure"  as  adjective  occurs  in  Lucrece,  219,  224, 
Golden  Age,  56,  60,  Forttme  hy  Land  and  Sea,  375, 
Pleasant  Dialogues,  114:  as  verb,  English  Traveller, 
90,  VvvaiKeLovj  i.  55,  Brit.  Troy^  vi.  11.  "Obdureness" 
comes  in  TwaiKtlov,  i,  55. 

A.  andV.,lQ9.:''Palpedr 

There  are  only  three  known  instances  of  this  extraor- 
dinary word;  this  one,  and  two  from  Heywood's  ac- 
knowledged works:  Brit.  Troy,  xv.  xlii.  and  Brazen 
Age,  206. 

I  add  a  short  list  of  instances  that  are  less  per- 
suasive individually,  but  have  enormous  weight  collec- 
tively. 

A.  and  F.,  152: 

Why  should  my  lord  droop,  or  deject  his  eye.^ 

Rare  in  this  literal  sense:  not  in  Shakespeare.  Hey- 
wood.   //  yoii  know  not  me,  206: 

It  becomes  not 
You,  being  a  Princess,  to  deject  your  knee. 

Cf.   also  Lucrece,   173,  "dejected,"   174,  "dejection." 


APPENDICES  187 

A.  and  F.,  153,  prostrate,  in  a  very  uncommon  meta- 
phorical usage: 

Your  daughter  .  .  .  most  humbly 
Prostrates  her  filial  duty. 

This  is  paralleled  twice  in   Heywood's  The  Rape  of 
Lucrece,  and  once  in  another  play: 

Rape  of  Lucre ce,  173 : 

This  hand  .  .  . 

Lays  his  victorious  sword  at  Tarquin's  feet. 

And  prostrates  with  that  sword  allegiance. 

Pp.  211,  212: 

The  richest  entertainment  lives  with  us    (i.e.  that 

lives  with  us) 
According  to  the  hour,  and  the  provision 
Of  a  poor  wife  in  the  absence  of  her  husband. 
We  prostrate  to  you. 

Royal  King  and  Loyal  Subject,  42 : 

To  you  ...  my  liege, 
A  virgin's  love  I  prostrate, 

A,andV.,15S: 

An  infinite 
Of  fair  Rome's  sons. 

"Infinite"  is  sometimes,  though  rarely,  used  by  itself, 
more  or  less  as  a  number.  But  used  merely  as  a  sub- 
stantive, as  here,  it  is  very  unusual.     It  is  found  in 


188  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Hey  wood's  Rape  of  Lucrece,  234,  Golden  Age,  36 ;  cf. 
also  Rape  of  Lucrece,  243 : 

Before  thee  infinite  gaze  on  thy  face. 

A,  amd  F.,  153: 

The  iron  wall 
That  rings  this  pomp  in  from  invasive  steel. 

A  rare  word.  Once  in  Shakespeare.  The  phrase  is 
repeated  in  Heywood's  Golden  Age,  40: 

The  big  Titanoys 
Plow  up  thy  land  with  their  invasive  steel. 

A,  and  v.,  15^: 

Let  Janus'  temple  be  devolved  (i.e.  overturned). 

A  very  rare  word  in  this  sense.  The  N.E.D,  gives  only 
two  other  examples,  one  of  1470,  one  of  1658.  Not  in 
Shakespeare.    Heywood,  Lucrece,  244 : 

For  they  behind  him  will  devolve  the  bridge. 

A,  and  v.,  155: 

You  mediate  excuse  for  courtesies. 
{i.e.  beg  on  somebody  else's  behalf.) 

Rare:  not  in  Shakespeare.  In  Webster's  The  White 
Devil  in  the  sense  of  "to  take  a  moderate  position!" 
Marlowe  and  one  or  two  prose-writers  have  used  it  in 


APPENDICES  189 

the  sense  of  the  text.  It  is  found  in  Heywood,  English 
Traveller,  84: 

Will  you.  .  .  . 
Not  mediate  my  peace? 

A,  and  F.,  161: 

Upon  my  infallid  evidence. 

Very  rare:  not  in  Shakespeare.  N.E.D.  gives  only 
two  other  examples,  of  which  one  is  Heywood,  Hier- 
arch.,  V.  308: 

All  these  are  infallid  testimonies 

A,andV„  174: 

Let  him  come  thrill  his  partisan 
Against  this  breast. 

^'Thrill,  i.e.  hurl, — an  unusual  sense  of  the  word,"  says 
Dyce.  He  adds  two  quotations,  both  from  Heywood's 
Iron  Age,  e.g.  p.  316: 

All  which  their  javelins   thrild  against  thy  breast. 

Note  the  correspondence  of  phrase.  This  use  is  not 
found  in  Shakespeare. 

A.  and  v.,  174: 

Marshal  yourselves,  and  entertain  this  novel 
Within  a  ring  of  steel. 


190  JOHN  WEBSTER 

An  uncommon  substantive,  not  found  in  Shakespeare. 
Hejwood,  English  Traveller,  27,  Golden  Age,  55,  Iron 
Age,  Second  Part,  373,  Brazen  Age,  202. 

A.  and  v.,  178: 

One  reared  on  a  popular  suiFrage 
Whose  station's  built  on  aves  and  applause. 

For  this  sense,  "shouts  of  applause,"  the  N.E.D. 
gives  only  two  examples ;  one  from  Shakespeare  {Meas- 
ure for  Measure),  the  other  from  Hey  wood,  Golden 
Age,  8. 

And  all  the  people  with  loud  suffrages 
Have  shrilled  their  aves  high  above  the  clouds. 

Note  the  conjunction  with  "suffrage."  The  human 
brain  works  half  mechanical  along  tiny  associative 
paths;  and  minute  hints  of  this  kind,  as  a  backing  to 
more  tangible  instances  of  the  uses  of  very  rare  words, 
importantly  help  this  sort  of  proof.  Heywood  also 
uses  the  word  uniquely.  Golden  Age,  47. 

The  people  ave'd  thee  to  heaven. 

A.andV,,  179: 

This  sight  has  stiffened  all  my  operant  powers. 

Dyee  quotes  Handet,  iii.  2 : 

My  operant  powers  their  function  leave  to  do. 

And  it  is  quite  probable  that  the  author  of  Appius  and 
Virgmia  is   borrowing  the  phrase   from   Shakespeare, 


APPENDICES  191 

for  the  word  is  very  uncommon.  Heywood,  in  The 
Royal  King  and  the  Loyal  Subject,  probably  written 
just  about  the  same  time  as  Hamlet,  uses  the  word,  in 
the  same  sense  (p.  6),  only  writing  "parts"  instead  of 
"powers."  The  sense  of  this  passage  is  even  nearer  to 
the  Hamlet  line:  they  are  obviously  connected — 
through  Heywood,  as  usual,  echoing  rather  than  imi- 
tating Shakespeare. 

When  I  forget  thee  may  my  operant  parts 
Each  one  forget  their  office. 

It  seems  to  me  probable  that  Heywood  echoed  Shake- 
speare immediately  in  The  Royal  King  and  the  Loyal 
Subject,  and  soon  after,  rather  less  closely  in  Appius 
and  Virginia, 

A.  and  V.,  179:  Strage, 

A  rare  Latinism:  not  in  Shakespeare.  Heywood  uses 
it  in  Pleasant  Dialogues,  iii.  and  in  The  Hierarchie?- 
There  are  other  general  verbal  resemblances.  The 
kind  of  word  Heywood  invents  and  uses  is  the  same  in 
Appius  and  Virgi/nia  and  through  the  six  volumes  of 
his  collected  "dramatic  works."  "Eternized,"  "mon- 
archizer,"  "applausive,"  "opposure"  occur  in  the  lat- 
ter; "imposturous,"  "enthronized,"  "donative,"  in  the 
former.     Who  could  distinguish?     In  Appius  and  Vir- 

*  The  earlier  and  longer  form  of  this  appendix  contains  about  a 
dozen  further  instances  of  verbal  similarity,  which  were  omitted 
in  the  later  version  as  being  rather  less  striking  than  those  given 
here,  and  therefore  unnecessary  to  the  argument.  Ed. 


192  JOHN  WEBSTER 

ginia,  178,  he  invents  (possibly  adopts)  the  rare  verb 
"to  oratorize."  In  The  English  Traveller,  68,  he  uses 
the  form  "to  orator."  Resemblances  of  phrase  are  as 
numerous,  though  not  so  striking.  Heywood  was  too 
ordinary  and  too  hurried  a  writer  to  have  much  eccen- 
tricity of  phrase.  He  wrote  in  the  common  style  of  the 
time,  only  slightly  garnished  by  a  few  queer  pet  words 
and  a  certain  Latinism  of  vocabulary.  He  does  not 
repeat  lines  and  metaphors  as  many  writers  do ;  only, 
occasionally,  phrases  and  collocations  of  words,  but 
these  of  such  a  kind  as  all  his  contemporaries  repeated 
also.  The  result  is  that  it  is  difficult  to  find  parallels 
of  this  nature  between  any  of  his  works.  What  there 
are  between  Appius  and  Virginia  and  the  rest,  there- 
fore, have  more  weight  than  they  would  have  in  the 
case  of  some  other  dramatists. 

There  is  a  rather  puzzling  expression  just  at  the 
end  of  Appius  and  Virginia  (p.  180)  : 

Appius  died  like  a  Roman  gentleman. 
And  a  man  both  ways  knowing. 

It  is,  metrically  and  in  a  sense,  very  like  a  sentence  at 
the  end  of  The  English  Traveller  (p.  94)  : 

Dalavill 
Hath  played  the  villain^  but  for  Geraldine, 
He  hath  been  each  way  noble. 

Cf .  also  Fortwne  hy  Land  and  Sea^  386 : 

Come !  I  am  both  ways  armed  against  thy  steel. 


APPENDICES  193 

One  of  the  few  points  which  the  author  of  Appi/iis 
and  Virgmia  introduced  into  the  stories  of  Dionysius 
and  Livy,  is  the  plot  to  coerce  Virginia  by  refusing 
the  army's  pay  and  forcing  Virginius  to  sell  his  goods 
to  pay  them.  In  the  first  act  of  A  Maidenhood  Well 
Lost  (espec.  iii  fF.)  Strozza  lays  much  the  same  plot 
against  "the  General"  and  his  daughter,  and  what  en- 
sues, the  army  starving  and  the  general  paying  the 
soldiers  himself,  is  exactly  the  same.  This  shows,  at 
least,  that  the  idea  was  in  Heywood's  mind  when  he 
was  writing  A  Maidenhood  Well  Lost.  What  is  more 
significant  is  that  another  idea  in  the  camp-scenes  in 
Appius  and  Virginia  (also  original)  was  in  his  mind 
when  he  was  writing  The  Rape  of  Lucrece.  On  page 
205  the  sentry  makes  the  entirely  unnecessary  remark 
about  his  occupation: 

Thus  must  poor  soldiers  do; 
While  their  commanders  are  with  dainties  fed. 
And  sleep  on  down,  the  earth  must  be  our  bed. 

This  is  the  nnotif  of  the  whole  mutiny-scene  in  Appkis 
and  Virginia  (p.  156).     See  especially  the  lines: 

I  wake  in  the  wet  trench, 
Loaded  with  more  cold  iron  than  a  gaol 
Would  give  a  murderer,  while  the  general 
Sleeps  in  a  field-bed,  and  to  mock  our  hunger 
Feeds  us  with  scent  of  the  most  curious  fare 
That  makes  his  tables  crack. 

It  is  obvious  that  Heywood's  mind  ran  easily  into 
the  same  trains  of  thought.     Suggest  "Camp"  to  him, 


194  JOHN  WEBSTER 

and  he  readily  pictures,  in  his  pleasant  light  water- 
colours,  the  starving,  cold  soldiers  suh  divo  and  the 
general  feeding  luxuriously  and  enjoying  a  bed.  In- 
deed, the  parallels  of  idea  with  Lucrece  are  numerous, 
as  one  would  expect.  Heywood  felt  that  a  great  man 
of  that  time  was  attended  by  a  "secretary."  Porsenna, 
King  of  the  Tuscans,  in  his  tent  (Lucrece,  M5)  wants 
lights.  He  calls  "Our  Secretary!"  The  secretary  ap- 
pears with  "My  lord?"  In  Appius  and  Virginia  (159, 
160)  when  Appius  is  bearded  by  Icilius,  he  calls  out 
for  help,  "Our  Secretary !"  and  summons  him  again  at 
the  end  of  the  interview,  "Our  Secretary!  .  .  .  We 
have  use  for  him."     Marcus  appears: 

My  honourable  lord.^  .  .  . 

There  are  other  such  small  points — the  bearing  of 
the  dead,  bleeding  bodies  of  Lucrece,  and  of  Virginia, 
before  the  people,  and  their  sympathy  and  rage;  the 
vagueness  of  locality  in  each  play ;  and  so  on. 

But  there  is  a  more  remarkable  resemblance.  It  is 
part  of  a  general  link  with  Heywood's  works — the 
clown.  Dr.  Stoll  has  three  pages  (197-200)  pointing 
out  and  illustrating  the  kinship  of  Corbulo  in  Appius 
and  Virgi/nia  with  Hey  wood's  clowns,  and  especially  the 
clown  of  The  Rape  of  Lucrece}  The  Heywood  clown, 
an  early  type,  was  a  simple,  good-hearted  creature,  who 
had  little  to  do  with  the  play,  and  poured  out  puns  and 
somewhat  Euphuistic  jokes  to  amuse  the  crowd.    There 

^  See  also  Eckhardt,  Die  lustige  Person  irri  dlteren  englischen 
Drama,  p.  433,  etc. 


APPENDICES  195 

was  a  painstaking,  verbal  tumbling  they  all  indulged  in. 
You  can  pick  at  random.  "If  they  suddenly  do  not 
strike  up,"  says  Slime  of  the  lingering  musicians,^  "I 
shall  presently  strike  them  ^  down."  It  is  the  voice  of 
Corbulo.  The  clown  in  The  Golden  Age  is  precisely  the 
same.  So  is  the  one  in  Lucrece,  and  as  the  plays  are 
more  alike,  the  similarity  of  his  position  is  the  more 
easily  seen.  It  is,  in  the  first  place,  a  very  remarkable 
coincidence  that  he  should  be  there  at  all.  Appius  and 
Virginia  and  The  Rape  of  Lucrece  are  the  only  Roman 
plaj^s  of  the  adult  Elizabethan  drama  to  introduce  such 
a  character.  It  was  exactly  like  Heywood  to  modify 
the  tradition  and  genus  in  this  way.  It  would  not 
have  been  at  all  like  Webster.  Dr.  Stoll  emphasises 
and  details  this  similarity  so  admirably,  and  as  he 
has  no  idea  that  Appius  and  Virginia  is  not  by  Web- 
ster, his  testimony  is  so  valuable  in  its  impartiality, 
that  I  cannot  do  better  than  quote  his  description. 

In  both  cases  the  clown  is  servant  to  the  heroine,  and  he 
appears  in  like  situations.  He  is  sent  by  his  mistress  on 
errands,  is  taken  to  task  by  her  for  ogling  at  her  maid  (and 
that  in  the  latter's  presence),  and  is  left  to  chatter  with 
other  servants  alone.  He  jokes  about  his  mistress's  mis- 
fortune, about  the  sinners  in  the  suburbs,  and,  being  a  Ro- 
man, out  of  the  Latin  grammar.  And  the  comic  side  of  both 
is  the  same.  It  lies  all  in  the  speeclies — the  clown  plays  no 
pranks  and  suffers  no  mishaps — and  it  has  an  episodic, 
random,  and  anachronistic  character.  It  is  all  jest  and  rep- 
artee, puns,  quibbles,  and  catches,  and  those  neither  clever 
nor  new;  and  the  drift  of  it  all,  whenever  it  gets  beyond 

^A   Woman  killed  with  Kindness,  97. 

*01d  Text  "thee!" 


196  JOHN  WEBSTER 

words,  is  satire  on  London  life  and  manners.     It  is  good- 
humoured,  moreover,  naive  and  dirty. 

The  episode  between  the  maid,  or  nurse,  and  the 
clown,  an  entirely  irrelevant  excrescence,  is  especially 
noteworthy.  There  is  even  a  certain  similarity  in 
phrasing  and  thought,  of  a  kind  that  suggests  the  same 
mind  working  at  different  times,  rather  than  imitation. 
Virginia  and  Lucrece  both  address  the  clown  as  "Sir," 
impatiently.     Virginia  begins: 

You  are  grown  wondrous  amorous  of  late; 
Why  do  you  look  back  so  often? 
Lucrece.     Sirrah,  I  ha'  seen  you  oft  familiar 

With  this  my  maid  and  waiting-gentlewoman, 
As  casting  amorous  glances,  wanton  looks. 
And  privy  becks,  savouring  incontinence. 

Dr.  Stoll,  supposing  Appius  and  Virginia  Webster's, 
can  of  course  only  suggest  that  Webster,  imitating 
Shakespeare  in  the  general  conception  of  his  play, 
turned  suddenly,  picked  out  one  favourite  character 
of  Heywood's,  and,  with  Heywood's  authority  for  the 
anachronism,  introduced  an  extraordinarily  good  imi- 
tation of  it  into  his  own  work.  He  is  like  a  ventrilo- 
quist who  has  at  least  two  lay-figures,  each  talking 
with  a  different  voice  from  the  other's,  and  from  their 
master's.  "Eclecticism"  is  a  mild  word  for  such  a 
method. 

IV 

Anyone  who  believes  in  Webster's  authorship  of 
the  play,  has  now  got  to  explain  away  not  only  the 


APPENDICES  197 

date  difficulty,  not  only  the  general  aesthetic  absurdity, 
not  only  the  borrowing  of  a  pet  character  of  Hey- 
wood's,  but  also  the  sudden  entire  adoption  of  Hey- 
wood's  individual,  distinguishing  vocabulary.  Twenty 
years'  friendship,  you  are  to  suppose,  never  affected 
Webster's  vocabulary  in  this  direction  in  the  slightest 
degree.  Then,  in  a  transport  of  "senile"  affection,  he 
hurled  aside  his  own  personality,  and  became  mere 
Tom. 

In  the  next  place,  consider  how  the  theory  of  Hey- 
wood's  authorship  suits  the  facts  of  the  play.  If 
Hey  wood  wrote  Appius  and  Virginia,  there  is  no  diffi- 
culty about  words  or  handling.  He  wrote  the  play 
most  like  it  of  all  the  plays  in  the  world.  There  is 
no  difficulty  about  style.  It  is  exactly  like  Heywood 
when  he  is  writing  solemnly,  as  in  parts  of  Lucrece, 
parts  of  the  various  "Ages,"  and  the  beginning  and 
end  of  The  Royal  King  and  the  Loyal  Subject.  Only 
it  is  rather  more  mature,  it  has  a  little  more  freedom 
and  rhetoric,  than  the  early  style  of  Lucrece  and  some 
of  the  "Ages."  This  suits  the  other  indications  of 
date.  For,  again,  there  is  no  difficulty  about  the  date. 
The  difference  between  Lucrece  and  Appius  and  Vir- 
ginia is  mostly  due  to  the  fact  that  Coriolanus  (c. 
1608)  must  have  intervened.  Any  date  after  1608 
would  do ;  immediately  after  is  the  most  likely,  because 
the  resemblances  of  style  and  vocabulary  are,  on  the 
whole,  to  the  rather  earlier  works. 

I  imagine-  that  the  main  part  of  Appius  and  Vir- 
ginia, as  we  have  it,  was  written  then.     It  may,  and 


198  JOHN  WEBSTER 

indeed  must,  have  been  cut  about  and  altered,  by  Hey- 
wood  or  others,  before  it  found  a  last  home  with  "Bees- 
ton's  boys"  in  1639,  or  a  final  resting-place  with  Mose- 
ley  in  1654. 

The  metrical  characteristics  noticed  in  Appius  and 
Virginia  are  Heywood's.  Heywood's  blank  verse,  says 
Dr.  Schipper,^  is  "sehr  gewandt  und  harmonisch  ge- 
baut."  This  applies  perfectly  to  our  play.  He  also 
calls  attention,  of  course,  to  the  number  of  rhyming 
couplets,  ending  off  even  short  speeches.  It  is  this 
characteristic  in  Appius  and  Virginia  that  slightly  puz- 
zles Dr.  Stoll  and  suddenly  upsets  his  metrical  tables 
(p.  190).  The  only  detailed  examination  of  Hey- 
wood's prosody  that  I  know  is  in  Dr.  Franz  Albert's 
"tJber  Thomas  Heywood's  Life  and  Death  of  Hector 
of  Trot/.'*  ^  It  is  concerned  mainly  with  certain  sides 
of  Heywood's  work,  mostly  undramatic,  and  it  is  not 
very  perspicacious,  having  most  of  the  faults  of  Ger- 
mans trying  to  understand  English  metre.  But  it 
enumerates  some  of  the  more  tangible  characteristics, 
and  lays  great  stress  on  that  trick  of  conscious  and 
rather  conventionalised  elision,  especially  between  "to" 
and  a  verb  with  an  initial  vowel,  that  I  had  already  in- 
dependently noticed  in  Appius  and  Virginia^  and  have 
remarked  on  earlier  in  this  appendix. 

The  various  characteristics  of  the  play  that  are 
no  bar  to  Webster's  authorship  fit  in  equally  well  or 
better   with   Heywood's.      This   is   the   case   with   the 

^Englische  Metrik,  1881,  vol.  ii.  p.  335. 
^  Especially  pp.  22,  112. 


APPENDICES  199 

numerous  slight  imitations  of  phrases  of  Shakespeare, 
which  are  rather  more  a  mark  of  Heywood  than  of 
Webster.-^ 

The  sources  of  Appius  and  Virginia  ^  are,  ultimately, 
Livy  and  Dionysius  of  Halicarnassus.  Dr.  Lauschke 
believes  he  used  both  of  these,  and  also  Painter,  who 
paraphrased  Livy,  and  Giovanni  Fiorentino,  the  Ital- 
ian translator  of  Dionysius.  As  Dr.  Stoll  points  out, 
there  is  no  evidence  for  Giovanni  Fiorentino,  and  very 
little  for  Livy  in  the  original,  as  against  Painter.^ 
They  do  not  seem,  however,  to  have  considered  the  pos- 
sibility of  Philemon  Holland's  well-known  translation 
of  Livy  (1600).  In  the  passage  where  the  question  of 
Virginia's  custody  till  the  trial  is  being  discussed,  Hol- 
land introduces  the  technical  legal  word  "forthcom- 
ing." Appius  and  Virginia  makes  good  use  of  the  word 
in  the  corresponding  passage  (p.  167).  Painter  does 
not  use  it,  and  the  Latin  does  not  necessarily  suggest 
it.  The  author  of  Appius  and  Virginia  may  have 
thought  of  it  for  himself,  in  reading  the  original.  But 
it  decidedly  points  to  Holland  being  used;  and  there- 
fore does  away  with  the  necessity  of  either  Painter  or 

^See  Cambridge  History  of  English  Literature,  vol.  vi.  p.  106. 

'  See  Lauschke,  "John  Webster's  Tragodie  Appius  and  Virginia/' 
and  Stoll,  pp.  160-162. 

'There  are  two  points:  (<x)  Livy  has  "sordidatus" ;  A.  and  V. 
"disguised  in  dust  and  sweat";  Painter  nothing.  This  is  very 
little,  and  becomes  nothing  when  you  realise — Dr.  Stoll  does  not 
point  it  out,  though  Lauschke  does — that  "sordidatus"  and  "dis- 
guised .  .  ."  come  in  entirely  different  parts  of  the  story.  (6) 
Minutius  as  the  name  of  the  general  at  Algidum  occurs  in  Livy, 
not  in  Painter  or  Dionysius.    This  has  a  little  weight. 


200  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Livy.  It  is  certain  that  Dionjsius  was  used,^  in  the 
original  or  a  Latin  translation  (there  was  probably 
no  English  translation  at  this  time).  The  sources, 
then,  favour  Heywood  if  anything.  Of  Webster's 
classical  knowledge  we  can  only  say  that  he  knew  other 
people's  Latin  quotations.  Thomas  Heywood,  Fellow 
of  Peterhouse,  translator  of  Sallust,  Ovid,  and  Lucian, 
author  of  the  learned  Hier archie.  Apology  for  Actors, 
TvvaLKehv,  etc.,  was  a  lover  of  learning  and  a  reader 
of  Latin  and  Greek  all  his  life. 


It  remains  to  see  what  explanation,  on  the  assump- 
tion that  Heywood  is  mainly  or  entirely  the  author  of 
Appius  and  Virginia,  can  be  given  of  the  exiguous 
pieces  of  evidence  that  point  towards  Webster.  There 
is  first  Moseley's  attribution.  I  have  said  how  little 
weight  the  attribution  of  a  late  publisher  carries.  In 
this  case  it  is  impossible  to  do  much  more  than  theorise 
about  what  can  have  happened.  If  Heywood's  name 
was  on  the  play  when  Moseley  got  it,  it  is  unlikely  he 
would  have  changed  it  for  Webster's,  not  only  because 
he  seems  to  have  been  fairly  honest,  but  also  because 
there  was  not  sufficient  inducement.  Of  the  two,  how- 
ever, Webster  was  the  more  famous  and  attractive  after 
the  Civil  War.  Winstanley  (1686)  (who— it  is  an  odd 
accident — mentions  all  Webster's  plays  except  Appius 
*  V.  Stoll,  p.  162,  for  conclusive  proofs. 


APPENDICES  201 

avd  Virginia)  makes  little  of  either  of  them.     Phillips 
(1674)   says  Webster  was  the  author  of  "several  not 
wholly  to  be  rejected  plays";  on  the  identity  of  which, 
however,  he  was  terribly  shaky.     Heywood  he  dismisses 
even  more  cursorily  as  the  writer  of  "many  but  vulgar 
comedies."    Langbaine,  who  always  takes  a  rather  high 
tone,  describes  Webster  as  "an   author   that  lived  in 
the  reign  of  King  James  the  First,  and  was  in  those 
days  accounted  an  excellent  poet."     But  he  goes  on  to 
confess  that  The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  The  White  Devil, 
and  Appius  and  Virginia,  "have,  even  in  our  own  age, 
gained  applause."     It  was  true.  The  White  Devil  was 
being  acted  at  the  Theatre  Royal  in  1671,  and  a  quarto 
of  it  was  printed  in  the  following  year.     The  Duchess 
of  Malfl  was  acted  in  1664  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields,  and 
in  1667  at  the  Duke's  Theatre.     It  was  reprinted  in 
the    same   year.      Downes    {Roscius    Anglicanus)    de- 
scribes it  as  "one  of  the  best  stock-tragedies."    Appius 
and  Virgvnia,  as  Webster's,  with  Betterton's  alterations, 
was  acted  at  the  Duke's  Theatre  in  1670.    Mrs.  Better- 
ton  was  Virginia.     Genest  quotes   from  Downes   that 
it  ran  for  eight  days,  and  was  very  frequently  acted 
afterwards.     All  this  shows  that  Webster's  name  was 
fairly  well  known  in  this  period.     There  is  no  trace  of 
any  known  play  of  Heywood's  being  revived. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  imagine  a  play  of  his  coming 
without  a  name,  or  with  a  wrong  name,  into  the  hands 
of  a  pubhsher  of  1654.  There  were  two  hundred  and 
twenty  plays   "in  which  I  have  had  either  an  entire 


202  JOHN  WEBSTER 

hand  or  at  least  a  main  finger."  ^  On  any  that  came 
to  the  press  in  his  hfetime,  he  seems  to  have  kept  an 
eye.  For  the  others,  when  they  had  passed  out  of  his 
control,  he  seems  not  to  have  cared.  "Many  of  them, 
by  shifting  and  change  of  companies  have  been  negli- 
gently lost;  others  of  them  are  still  retained  in  the 
hands  of  some  actors  who  think  it  against  their  pecu- 
liar profit  to  have  them  come  in  print."  ^  Appius  and 
Virginia  may  have  belonged  to  either,  more  probably 
to  the  latter  class.  And  it  is  very  easy  to  trace  a  pos- 
sible and  probable  history  of  this  play.^  We  first  hear 
of  it  in  1639,  in  the  possession  of  Christopher  Beeston's 
company  of  boys,  who  occupied  the  Cockpit  Theatre 
from  1637  onwards.  Now  Christopher  Beeston  and 
Thomas  Heyi70od  were  members  of  Queen  Anne's  com- 
pany from  its  foundation  in  1603.  In  1617  the  Cock- 
pit opened,  and  Queen  Anne's  company  went  there  till 
1619.  From  1619  to  1625  the  lady  Elizabeth's  com- 
pany held  the  Cockpit,  and  probably,  though  not  cer- 
tainly, Heywood  and  Beeston  were  of  them.  From 
1625  to  1637  they  were  followed  by  Queen  Henrietta's 
company,  managed  by  Beeston.  And  then  came  Bee- 
ston's  company  of  boys,  who  possessed  the  play  in 
1639.  Among  all  the  various  strands  of  continuity  in 
the  Elizabethan  theatres  and  companies,  this  is  a  very 
definite  one,  forming  about  Heywood  and  Beeston,  in 
connection  first  with  Queen  Anne's  company,  and  then, 

^Tke  English  Traveller:  To  the  Reader.  ^ Ibid. 

'  See  Murray,  English  Dramatic  Companies,  vol.  i.  pp.  265-370, 
and  elsewhere. 


APPENDICES  203 

locally,  with  the  Cockpit.  And  with  Heywood,  Bee- 
ston,  and,  I  believe,  Appius  and  Virginia,  on  this  long 
journey,  goes  significantly  The  Rape  of  Lucrece, 

It  is  also  to  be  noticed  that  it  was  Queen  Anne's 
company  that  acted  two  of  Webster's  three  original 
plays.  The  White  Devil  (1611)  and  The  Devil's  Law- 
Case  (1620).  He  seems  to  have  gone  off  to  the  King's 
Men  between  these,  with  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  (1612- 
1613).  But  we  may  suppose  that  he  had  most  to  do 
with  Queen  Anne's  company. 

There  remain  the  similarities  and  repetitions  of 
phrase  in  Appius  and  Virginia  and  Webster's  plays. 
As  I  have  said,  only  three  of  these  are  of  any  im- 
portance, two  exact  verbal  repetitions  and  one  strik- 
ing similarity  of  phrase  and  idea;  all  connecting  with 
The  Duchess  of  Malfi}  If  Heywood  wrote  the  main 
part  or  all  of  Appius  and  Virginia,  there  are  six  pos- 
sible explanations  of  these  passages.  They  are  an 
accident;  or  Heywood  imitated  Webster;  or  Webster 
imitated  Heywood;  or  the  play  was  touched  up  by 
some  Queen's  company  actor  or  author  who  knew  The 
Duchess  of  Malfi;  or  Webster  himself  touched  it  up; 
or  Webster  and  Heywood  wrote  Appius  and  Virginia 
together,  Heywood  taking  the  chief  part. 

The  first  is  improbable,  though  far  less  improbable 
than  it  seems.  For  both  {a)  and  {g)  are  sententious 
sayings  such  as  the  Elizabethans  delighted  to  note 
down  and  repeat.  Webster  is  full  of  these.  And  the 
identical  repetition  of  one  of  them  by  him  and  Marston 
*(«)»  (/)»  and  {g)  in  my  list  (pp.  179-182). 


204  JOHN  WEBSTER 

supported  great  theories  of  his  imitation  of  Marston 
till  Mr.  Crawford  discovered  it  in  Montaigne/  the 
common  source  to  which  thej  had  independently  gone. 
Still,  the  coincidence  of  the  two  apophthegms  is  rather 
much  to  account  for  in  this  way.  It  is  possible,  but 
that  is  all.  And  there  is  the  further  difficulty  against 
it  that  Heywood  was  not  wont  to  write  in  this  note- 
book manner.     He  worked  too  quickly. 

This  also  counts  against  what  might  otherwise  seem 
an  easier  theory,  that  (/)  is  either  an  accident  or  the 
imitation  of  reminiscence,  but  that  these  two  (a)  and 
(g)  are  the  result  of  Heywood  directly  copying  Web- 
ster— noting  down  and  using  two  of  his  phrases.  The 
possibility  of  tliis  is  also  lessened  by  the  probability 
on  other  grounds  that  Appius  and  Virginia  is  earlier 
than  The  Duchess  of  Malfl.  Webster  may  have  imi- 
tated Heywood.  He  was  a  great  friend  of  his  at  this 
time.^  And  if  Appius  and  Virginia  was,  as  is  prob- 
able, written  early,  it  must  have  appeared  in  the  same 
theatre  and  about  the  same  time  as  The  White  Devil,^ 
Also  it  was  Webster's  habit  to  take  down  from  other 
authors  and  afterwards  use  sentences  and  similes  of  an 
apophthegmatic  or  striking  nature.  We  know  that 
he  treated  Donne,  Montaigne,  Jonson,  Sidney,  and 
perhaps  Marston  and  Dekker  in  this  way.     Why  not 

*  Crawford,  Collectanea,  Series  ii.  p.  35. 

'  He  wrote  some  lines  "To  his  beloved  friend  Master  Thomas 
Heywood,"  prefixed  to  Heywood's  Apology  for  Actors,  1612. 

'  It  is  an  important  indication  of  the  date  of  Appius  and  Vif' 
ginia  that  The  White  Devil  (1611)  does  not  borrow  from  it,  and 
The  Duchess  of  Malfl  (1612-13)  does. 


APPENDICES  205 

Heywood,  his  friend  and  collaborator  ?  It  is  true  Hey- 
wood  does  not  lend  himself  often  so  easily  to  such  use. 
That,  and  the  fact  that  he  has  not  been  thoroughly 
searched  for  such  a  purpose,  may  explain  why  there 
are  few  other  known  parallels.  This  theory  is  the  more 
probable  because  the  lines  of  (a)  and  (g),  and  their 
ideas,  seem  more  natural  and  in  place  in  Appius  and 
Virginia  than  they  do  in  The  Duchess  of  Malfl.  And 
it  is  easier  to  imagine  Webster  finding  {Appius  and 
Virginia,  149), 


I  have  seen  children  oft  eat  sweetmeats  thus, 
As  fearful  to  devour  them. 


and  adding  (Duchess  of  Malfl,  65)  the  words  "too 
soon"  than  Heywood  doing  the  opposite. 

There  remain  the  various  possibilities  of  two  hands 
having  been  at  work,  or  the  same  hand  at  two  periods. 
These  are  favoured  by  the  a  priori  probability  of  a 
play  that  had  at  least  thirty  years  of  acting  life  being 
altered  in  the  period,  and  also  by  certain  indications 
that  all  is  not  right  with  the  play  as  it  stands.  These 
I  shall  shortly  set  out. 

In  the  beginning  of  Act  I.  there  is  a  queer  and  soli- 
tary passage  of  prose  which  looks  like  an  abbreviation 
for  acting  purposes.  Dyce  suspects  it ;  and  it  is  to  be 
noted  that  the  speech  following  the  prose  contains  one 
of  the  two  "repetitions"  from  The  Duchess  of  Malfi. 

In  II.  3  (p.  160)  there  are  difficulties  which  seem 
to  have  passed  unnoticed.     Icilius  comes  to  plead  with 


206  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Appius  for  the  camp,  and  so  for  Virginius.  Appius 
counters  with  a  proposal  that  Icilius  should  give  up 
Virginia,  and  marry  into  his  own  family.  Icilius  flies 
out  with  the  charge  that  Appius  has  been  lustfully 
tempting  Virginia  with  presents  and  letters.  Appius 
is  prevented  by  force  and  threats  from  either  calling 
for  help  or  replying.  At  length  the  storm  subsides. 
Appius  replies,  pretending  he  knows  nothing  of  it, 
playing  indulgent  eld.     Icilius  crumbles  completely. 

I.     I  crave  your  pardon. 

A.     Granted  ere  craved,  my  good  Icilius. 

I.     Morrow. 

A.     It  is  no  more  indeed.     Morrow,  Icilius, 

If  any  of  our  servants  wait  without, 

Command  them  in. 

I  do  not  think  any  good  sense  can  be  made  out  of  that 
"It  is  no  more  indeed."  It  looks,  at  first  sight,  like  a 
pun  on  "morrow."  But  that  does  not  help.  Indeed  the 
whole  collapse  of  Icilius  is  oddly  curt  and  sudden.  It 
seems  to  me  probable  that  a  cut  has  been  made  here, 
or  some  other  operation  of  hasty  revision. 

And  in  the  next  scene,  III.  1  (pp.  161-2)  Icilius 
reports  the  interview  to  his  friends  and  Virginia.  He 
went,  he  says,  to  Appius,  took  him  by  the  throat, 
forced  him  to  hear,  taxed  him  with  his  lust  and  his 
behaviour,  "with  such  known  circumstance"  that  Ap- 
pius could  try  to  excuse  it,  but  could  not  deny  it. 
They  parted  "friends  in  outward  show" ;  Appius  swore 
"quite  to  abjure  her  love";  but  yet  had  continued  his 
messages. 


APPENDICES  207 

Now  this  is  quite  a  different  story  from  the  truth. 
In  a  play  of  this  kind,  simple  in  characterisation  and 
full  of  childishness  in  construction  and  episode,  we 
cannot  suppose  the  author  was  attempting  the  subtle 
irony  Ibsen  practised  in  The  Wild  Duck,  where  you 
see  the  truth  in  one  scene  and  Hialmar  Ekdal's  family 
version  of  it  in  the  next.  Nor  would  such  a  sudden 
spasm  of  Euripidean  double-dealing  help  either  the 
character  of  Icilius  or  the  play.  Besides,  there  are 
other  indications  of  confusion.  For  when  (III.  2,  p. 
164)  Virginia  is  suddenly  arrested,  she  cries  out: 


O  my  Icilius,  your  incredulity 
Hath  quite  undone  me ! 


which  seems  to  refer  to  the  first,  true  version  of  the 
story,  and  to  mean  that  Icilius'  not  believing  her  but 
accepting  Appius'  defence  had  ruined  her.  These 
seem  to  me  to  be  plain  signs  that  the  scenes  as  they 
stand  have  been  written,  to  some  extent  at  least,  by  two 
people,  or  by  the  same  person  at  different  times. 

Another  discrepancy  affecting  the  same  point,  the 
interview  and  the  report  of  it,  is  mentioned  by  Dyce 
in  his  note  on  11.  3  (p.  158).  The  scene  would  seem 
to  be  an  outer  apartment  in  the  house  of  Appius. 
But  presently,  when  Appius  is  left  alone  with  Icilius, 
a  change  of  scene  is  supposed:  for  he  says  to  Claudius 
(p.  160): 

To  send  a  ruffian  hither. 
Even  to  my  closet! 


208  JOHN  WEBSTER 

And  jet,  in  the  first  scene  of  the  next  act,  Icilius 
speaks  of  the  interview  as  having  taken  place  in  the 
lobby! 

The  only  other  suspicion  of  corruption  in  this  play 
which  I  know  of  may  as  well  be  mentioned  here.  Mr. 
Pierce  ^  believes  that  III.  4,  the  conversation  between 
Corbulo  and  the  serving-men,  was  interpolated  to  please 
the  groundlings.  His  reasons  are:  (1)  it  is  wholly  in 
prose;  (2)  the  doggerel  rhyme;  (3)  it  does  not  ad- 
vance the  action;  (4)  the  average  number  of  three- 
syllable  Latin  words  (his  particular  test)  is  very  low. 
I  do  not  feel  convinced.  The  scene  is  extremely  Hey- 
woodian.  The  Latin-word  test  is  not  so  important  as 
Mr.  Pierce  appears  to  think,  especially  when  applied 
to  a  short,  rather  comic,  prose-scene.  And  it  affects 
Heywood  far  less  than  Webster.  No  doubt  this  scene 
was  put  in  "to  please  the  groundlings."  But  it  was 
put  in  by  the  author. 

The  conclusion,  then,  that  the  play  as  we  have  it 
has  been  revised  and  altered,  helps  any  theory  that 
Webster  and  Heywood  each  had  a  finger  in  it.  It 
might,  of  course,  have  been  changed  by  any  member 
of  the  Queen's  Servants'  Company.  But  he  would 
not  be  likely  to  have  incorporated  passages  from  The 
Duchess  of  Malfi,  a  play  belonging  to  the  King's  Men. 
If  it  was  Heywood  himself  that  touched  it  up,  in  1613 
or  so,  he  might  quite  well  have  done  this,  being  a  friend 
of  Webster's.  But  it  is  most  easy  to  suppose  Webster 
the  reviser.  Either  this,  or  his  collaboration,  is  ren- 
*  The  Collaboration  of  Webster  and  Dekker. 


APPENDICES  209 

dered  rather  probable  by  the  presence  through  the 
play  of  ten  or  a  dozen  passages,  averaging  perhaps  two 
lines,  that  seem  to  taste  slightly  of  his  style.  Perhaps 
it  is  true  that  any  play,  examined  closely,  would  yield 
the  same.  And  certainly  Heywood  covld  have  written 
them.  But,  at  moments,  there  does  seem  to  be  the 
flavour,  almost  imperceptibly  present.  If  reviser  or 
collaborator,  Webster  obviously  had  recourse  to  the 
same  note-books  as  he  used  for  The  Duchess  of  Malft, 
which  suggests  that  he  would  be  working  on  it  about 
161S  or  soon  after.  And  in  either  case,  we  should 
have  a  very  good  explanation  of  his  name  being  con- 
nected with  the  play.  If  he  revised,  we  must  sup- 
pose that  he  shortened  and  made  more  dramatic  the 
very  beginning  of  the  play,  and  heightened,  or  even 
rewrote,  the  trial  scene  (IV.  1).  It  is  important  to 
notice  that  in  this  rather  long  scene  (1)  there  are  no 
very  characteristic  words  of  Hey  wood's,  (2)  there  are 
more  of  the  phrases,  words  and  lines  that  are  faintly 
reminiscent  of  Webster  than  anywhere  else  in  the  play,^ 
(3)  two  2  of  the  three  strong  indications  of  a  connec- 
tion with  Webster  occur. 

Give  Webster  the  revision  of  these  two  scenes,  and 
you  have  satisfied  his  utmost  claims.  To  yield  him 
more  is  mere  charity.  If  he  collaborated,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  divide  the  play  up  between  the  two.    In  certain 

1  "Dunghill,"  "mist,"  "pursenet,"  "to  bring  my  girl  asleep,"  "and 
this  short  dance  of  life  is  full  of  changes,"  etc.,  etc. 
U.  e.  if)  and  (^r). 


210  JOHN  WEBSTER 

scenes  (e.g.  IV.  2  and  V.  3)  Hey  wood's  vocabulary 
comes  out  more  clearly  than  in  the  rest.  But  one  can 
only  say  that  Webster's  part  is  very  small  compared 
with  Heywood's,  as  unimportant  as  it  is  in  Northward 
Ho  and  Westward  Ho. 

In  sum:  general,  critical,  and  aesthetic  impressions, 
more  particular  examination  of  various  aspects,  and 
the  difficulty  of  fitting  it  in  chronologically,  make  it 
impossible  to  believe  that  Appius  and  Virginia  is  by 
Webster,  while  the  evidence  in  favour  of  his  authorship 
is  very  slight.  All  these  considerations,  and  also  re- 
markable features  of  vocabulary  and  characterisation, 
make  it  highly  probable  that  it  is  by  Heywood.  The 
slight  similarities  between  The  Duchess  of  Malfl  and 
Appius  and  Virginia  may  be  due  to  Webster  borrowing 
in  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  from  Heywood,  or  revising 
Appius  and  Virginia,  or  having,  not  for  the  first  time, 
collaborated  with  Heywood,  but  very  subordinately. 
In  any  case,  Appius  and  Virgima  must  be  counted 
among  Heywood's  plays ;  not  the  best  of  them,  but 
among  the  better  ones ;  a  typical  example  of  him  in 
his  finer  moments,  written  rather  more  carefully  than 
is  usual  with  that  happy  man. 


Appendix  B. — Miscellaneous 

NON-EXTANT  PLAYS 

There  are  no  difficulties  about  the  dates  of  most  of 
the  non-extant  plays.  Ccesar's  Fall,  Two  Shapes^  and 
Christmas  Comes  but  Once  a  Year  are  dated  1602  by 
the  entries  in  Henslowe.  Dr.  Greg  from  the  list  of 
collaborators  and  the  nearness  in  date  of  the  payments 
thinks  Ccesar^s  Fall  and  Two  Shapes  must  be  the  same 
play ;  it  may  be  so,  but  it  is  not  convincing.  Henslowe 
may  very  well  have  been  employing  the  same  people 
in  the  same  month  to  write  two  plays.  There  is  a 
doubt  about  the  name  of  Two  Shapes.  That  is  Dr. 
Greg's  reading.  Collier  read  Two  Harpes;  which  some 
construe  Two  Harpies. 

A  Late  Murther  of  the  Son  upon  the  Mother  by  Ford 
and  Webster  is  entered  in  Herbert's  Office  Book  for 
September,  1624.  Pamphlets  of  July,  1624,  about 
such  a  murder  case  are  on  record.  The  play  must 
have  been  written  in  that  year. 

The  Guise,  which  Webster  mentions  in  his  Dedica- 
tion to  The  DetriVs  Law-Case,  is  of  quite  unknown  date. 
An  entry  in  Henslowe  for  1601  giving  Webster  a  play 
of  that  name  turns  out  to  be  a  forgery  of  Collier's. 
The   original   entry   probably   referred   to   Marlowe's 

211 


212  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Massacre  at  Paris,  Dr.  Stoll,  scenting  Marlowe  In 
Webster's  latest  plays,  has  spun  a  theory  of  Webster 
reading  up  Marlowe,  especially  the  Massacre  at  Paris, 
in  his  old  age.  He  deduces  that  we  can  date  Guise 
about  1620.  The  whole  theory  rests  on  a  quite  wild 
assumption  that  an  Elizabethan  dramatist,  wishing  to 
write  a  play  on  a  certain  subject,  began  by  reading 
up  all  previous  plays  on  that  subject,  like  a  professor 
of  English  Literature.  If  Webster's  own  list  of  plays 
is  in  chronological  order.  Guise  is  later  than  1614. 
We  can  say  no  more. 


The  Thracian  Wonder,  like  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold, 
was  first  published  in  1661  by  Francis  Kirkman  as  by 
Webster  and  Rowley.  No  one  believes  it  to  be  by 
either.  The  reasons  of  this  disbelief  are  entirely  aes- 
thetic. It  is  dangerous,  as  I  have  said  elsewhere,  to 
take  it  for  granted  that  a  bad  play  cannot  be  by  a 
good  author.  It  is  conceivable  that  Webster  and  Row- 
ley might  have  written  or  helped  to  write  a  play  like 
this  at  the  beginning  of  their  careers.  Each  has  been 
concerned  in  equally  bad  work.  But  if  they  did  write 
it,  it  does  not  increase  our  knowledge  of  them;  and  if 
they  did  not  write  it,  it  does  not  matter  who  did. 
So  the  affair  is  not  very  important.  A  rather  unsuc- 
cessful attempt  has  been  made  to  explain  Kirkman's 
attribution.  Another  Webster  in  1617  wrote  a  story, 
which  had  no   connection  with   this   play,   but  which 


APPENDICES  213 

Kirkman  may  have  thought  had.  It  is  not  necessary. 
Kirkman  was  one  of  the  wildest  of  the  Restoration 
pubHshers.  The  fact  that  he  was  piibhshing  one  play 
as  by  Webster  and  Rowley  might  quite  likely  lead  him 
to  put  their  names  on  the  title-page  of  its  twin.  Any- 
how he  has  no  authority.  We  do  not  know  who  did  or 
who  did  not  write  The  Thracian  Wonder, 


Monuments  of  Honour  is  a  quite  ordinary  city 
triumph,  there  is  nothing  remarkable  or  important 
about  it.  It  was  published  in  1624  as  by  "John  Web- 
ster, merchant  taylor."  "John  Webster"  was  a  com- 
mon enough  name,  and  there  is  no  proof  that  this  one 
is  our  author.  The  Latin  tag  on  the  title-page,  which 
also  ends  the  preface  to  The  WhiteDevil,  was  in  common 
use.  There  is  only  the  probability  that  no  other  John 
Webster  would  have  been  distinguished  enough  in  liter- 
ature to  have  been  chosen  to  write  this.  The  guilds 
generally  liked  to  get  hold  of  some  fairly  accomplished 
literary  man  for  such  a  purpose.  Neither  the  verse  nor 
the  invention  of  this  pageant  affirms  the  authorship  of 
Webster.    But  there  is  also  nothing  to  contradict  it. 


Appendix  C. — Sir  Thomas  Wyatt 


"the    famous   history   of    sir    THOMAS   WYATT" 


Date. 

The  Famous  History  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt.  With 
the  Coronation  of  Queen  Mary  and  the  Coming  In  of 
King  Philip.  Written  by  Thomas  Dickers  and  John 
Webster,  was  printed  in  1607.^  In  October,  1602, 
Chettle,  Dekker,  Heywood,  Smith,  and  Webster  were 
paid,  in  all,  £8  for  Part  I.  of  Lady  Jane  or  The  Over- 
throw of  Rebels;  and  Dekker  was  paid,  in  earnest,  5s. 
for  Part  II.  (Smith  and  Chettle  may  have  received 
small  amounts  for  this,  also.)  All  this  was  on  behalf 
of  Worcester's  Men,  who  passed  under  the  patronage 
of  Queen  Anne  in  1603.  As  the  1607  Quarto  of  Sir 
Thomas  Wyatt  says  it  was  played  by  the  Queen's 
Majesty's  Servants,  and  as  the  authors  are  the  same, 
there  is  no  reason  to  doubt  that  Dyce  was  right  in 
supposing  that  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  consists  of  frag- 
ments of  both  parts  of  Lady  Jane.  Dr.  StoU  thinks 
perhaps  we  have  only  Part  I.,  as  The  Coronation  of 
Queen  Mary  and  The  Coming  In  of  King  Philip  are 
only  promised  and  not  given.  Dr.  Greg  suggests  that 
the  cut  version  of  Part  I.   ends  and  Part  II.  begins, 

*  V.  Greg.    Henslowe's  Diary,  Pt.  ii.  pp.  232,  3.    There  was  an- 
other edition  in  1612. 

214 


APPENDICES  215 

with  Mary's  audience  (p.  193,  column  2;  Scene  10). 
Professor  Schelling  makes  the  credible  suggestion  that 
the  censor  had  cut  out  a  great  deal;  especially,  no 
doubt,  the  Coming  In  of  King  Philip.  As  it  stands, 
the  play  is  extraordinarily  short.  In  any  case,  the 
date  is  1602.  It  must  have  been  played  at  "The  Rose" ; 
and,  as  there  are  two  editions,  it  was  probably  revived. 

Sources. 

The  source  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt — that  is,  of  the 
two  parts  of  Lady  Jane — is  Holinshed ;  and,  as  far  as 
we  know,  nothing  else.^ 

CoUahoration. 

Opinions  have  differed  as  to  the  respective  amounts 
contributed  by  Dekker  and  Webster.  Dr.  Stoll,  argu- 
ing from  metre,  sentiment,  style,  phrases,  and  the  gen- 
eral nature  of  the  play,  can  find  Dekker  everywhere, 
Webster  nowhere.  Dr.  Greg  gives  Webster  rather  more 
than  half,  mostly  the  first  half.  Mr.  Pierce  ^  says  that 
Webster  wrote  "most  of  Scenes  2,  5,  6,  10,  14,  and  16, 
although  some  of  these  scenes  were  certainly  retouched 
by  Dekker,  and  all  of  them  may  have  been."  I  shall 
discuss  Mr.  Pierce's  method  of  assigning  scenes  more 
closely  in  the  Appendix  on  Westward  Ho  and  North- 
ward Ho.  In  the  case  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  none  of 
his  metrical  tests  seems  to  me  to  have  any  validity. 

*  V.  Stoll,  p.  45. 

'  The  Collaboration  of  Webster  and  Dekker.    I  use  his  division 
into  scenes,  which  is  the  same  as  Fleay's. 


216  JOHN  WEBSTER 

They  depend,  like  Dr.  StoU's,  on  the  assumption  that 
Webster's  metrical  characteristics  were  the  same  in 
1602  as  in  1610  or  1620 — an  assumption  Mr.  Pierce 
himself  confesses  to  be  absurd.  It  must  be  recognised 
that  we  have  only  three  plays  on  which  we  can  base 
our  generalisations  about  Webster's  metre,  two  slowly- 
written  Italian  tragedies  of  about  1610  or  1612  and 
a  tragi-comedy  of  1620.  In  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  Web- 
ster was  writing  a  different  kind  of  play,  together  with 
a  lot  of  other  people,  probably  in  a  great  hurry;  and 
it  is  likely  he  was  immature.  To  take  the  statistics 
for  rhyme  in  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  and  the  other  plays 
and  use  them,  as  proving  that  Webster  uses  rhyme  less 
than  Dekker,  to  apportion  the  scenes  in  Sir  Thomas 
Wyatt,  is  a  glaring  example  of  that  statistical  blind- 
ness and  inert  stupidity  that  has  continually  spoilt  the 
use  of  the  very  valuable  metrical  tables  that  have  been 
prepared  for  EHzabethan  Drama.  The  evidence  that 
metre  gives  in  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  can  only  be  of  the 
vaguest  description. 

So,  too,  with  characters.  The  reason  why  there  are 
certain  kinds  of  character  and  incident  in  any  of  these 
three  partnership  plays,  is  not  that  Dekker  wrote 
them.  It  is  that  they  are  that  kind  of  play.  If  Web- 
ster wrote  a  citizen's-wife-gallant  play,  he  must  have 
introduced  citizens'  wives  and  gallants,  even  if  he  did 
not  do  so  in  an  Italian  tragedy.  On  page  2  of  his 
book  Mr.  Pierce  claims  that  his  study  is  useful  as 
throwing  light  on  Webster's  range  as  an  author.  "If 
Webster  wrote  ...  the  parts  of  Captain  Jenkins  and 


APPENDICES  217 

Hans  Van  Belch  in  Northward  Ho,  then  he  showed  an 
element  of  pleasant  humour  and  manysidedness  which 
is  not  indicated  anywhere  else."  In  Chapter  VII., 
dealing  with  "The  Character  and  Atmosphere-Test," 
he  quotes  with  approval,  as  proof  of  what  is  and  what 
is  not  Dekker's,  Dr.  Stoll  on  these  characters.  "Mani- 
festly Dekker's  too  are  the  Dutch  Drawer  and  Mer- 
chant, and  the  Welsh  Captain.  A  Dutch  Hans  had 
already  appeared  in  the  Shoemaker  .  .  .  and  Captain 
Jenkins  ...  is  the  counterpart  of  Sir  Vaughan  ap 
Rees  in  Satiro-Mastix''  That  is  to  say,  these  charac- 
ters of  common  types  are  Dekker's,  because  Dekker 
uses  similar  ones  elsewhere,  and  not  Webster's  because 
Webster  doesn't.  You  start  out  to  see  if  Webster, 
having  written  only  in  a  certain  style  elsewhere,  wrote 
in  another  style  here.  You  conclude  that  he  has  not 
written  in  this  other  style  here,  because  he  has  written 
only  in  a  certain  style  elsewhere! 

Considerations  of  style  (in  the  narrower  sense  of 
literary  individuality)  and  vocabulary  are  more  con- 
vincing. The  only  one  of  Mr.  Pierce's  tests  that  has 
any  value  in  the  case  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt — except, 
of  course,  the  parallel-passages,  taken  with  caution — 
is  his  three-syllable-Latin-word  one.-^  A  large  propor- 
tion of  Latin  words,  and  any  other  characteristic  we 
recognise  clearly  as  one  of  the  later  Webster's,  do  tend 
to  prove  his  presence  in  a  scene — though  their  absence 
does  not  disprove  it.  These  slight  indications  of  style, 
if  they  had  arisen  and  become  unconscious  so  early, 

*  See  the  Appendix  on  Westwa/rd  Ho  and  Northward  Bo, 


218  JOHN  WEBSTER 

are  the  things  that  would  be  apparent  in  plays  of  dif- 
ferent species  by  the  same  author.  But  the  eight  or  ten 
years,  and  the  probable  presence  of  so  many  authors 
in  this  play,  must  make  us  sceptical.  The  latter  point,' 
indeed,  would  falsify  most  of  Mr.  Pierce's  work  if  it 
were  sound  on  other  grounds.  He  remembers,  on  his 
last  page,  that  Heywood,  Chettle,  and  Smith  also  have 
to  be  accounted  for.  He  dismisses  them  too  magnifi- 
cently. "It  would  be  useless  to  discuss  such  questions 
as  these  at  present,  since  no  practical  results  could 
follow.  We  have  offered  such  evidence  as  we  possess 
on  the  shares  of  Dekker  and  Webster;  and  here  we 
stop."  But  though  you  may  not  have  "discussed"  the 
question  of  the  relative  shares  of  C,  D.,  and  E.,  in  a 
play,  you  have  definitely  answered  it,  if  you  say  A. 
wrote  six  scenes  and  B.  the  rest.  The  Latin-word  test 
is  no  good  unless  we  have  Heywood's,  Chettle's,  and 
Smith's  figures,  as  well  as  Dekker's  and  Webster's.  It 
does  not  prove  that  Dekker  wrote  certain  scenes  and 
Webster  did  not,  to  say  that  Dekker  employs  a  "sweet 
personal  tone,"  or  a  market-girl  with  her  eggs,  else- 
where, and  Webster  does  not.  You  have  to  be  able  to 
say  that  Heywood  and  Chettle  and  Smith  also  are 
strangers  to  these  things. 

Miss  Mary  Leland  Hunt,  in  her  careful  and  useful 
monograph  on  Dekker,^  also  discusses  the  question  of 
the  partition  of  this  play.  Her  most  original  sugges- 
tion is  that  the  main  plan  of  the  play  is  due  to  Chettle. 
She  advances  various  indications  of  this ;  that  he  was 
*  Thomas  Dekker:  A  Study,  by  Mary  Leland  Hunt. 


APPENDICES  219 

older  than  Dekker  (and  Webster,  no  doubt);  that 
Henslowe  mentions  his  name  first ;  that  he  was  specially 
at  home  in  the  chronicle  history;  and  that  he  is  more 
old-fashioned — and  so  more  likely  to  have  planned  the 
old-fashioned  structure  of  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt — than 
Dekker.  Against  Dekker  and  Webster  this  certainly 
holds  true ;  and,  in  the  midst  of  our  uncertainties,  the 
conjecture  may  be  allowed  to  stand  as  more  persuasive 
than  any  alternative.  Beyond  this,  Miss  Hunt  has 
not  much  of  value  to  contribute.  She  hints  a  vague 
approval  of  Fleay's  attribution  of  scenes  1-9  to  Web- 
ster, 11-17  to  Dekker.  But  she  qualifies  this  by  giving 
Dekker  parts  of  7  and  9,  and  probably  4,  and  Web- 
ster 10.  The  pathos  of  the  trial-scene  (16),  she  thinks, 
points  to  Dekker. 

Her  judgment  is  not  very  trustworthy.  It  is  on 
emotional  rather  than  aesthetic  grounds — she  attri- 
butes, I  mean,  a  tender  scene  to  Dekker  and  a  gloomy 
scene  to  Webster,  because  Dekker  is  a  tender,  and 
Webster  a  gloomy,  dramatist. 

Welcoming  a  suggestion  of  Dr.  Greg's,  she  finds  the 
speeches  of  Wyatt  in  6  and  10  very  un-Dekkerish,  and 
therefore  gives  these  scenes  to  Webster.  (Mr.  Pierce, 
more  "scientifically"  notices  the  same  thing.)  For 
myself,  speaking  with  all  due  mistrust  of  human  ability 
to  pick  out  one  author  from  another  in  these  cases,  I 
thought  I  too  found  a  different  note  in  these  scenes. 
But  if  it  is  not  Dekker's,  it  is  as  certainly  neither  the 
Webster's  of  1612  nor  the  "Webster's"  of  the  fancied 


220  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Websterian  parts  of  this  play.     It  seems  to  me  far 
more  probably  Heywood.^ 

The  whole  position  is  this,  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  con- 
sists of  the  fragments  of  the  first  or  of  both  of  two 
plays,  one  by  Chettle,  Dekker,  Heywood,  Smith,  and 
Webster,  the  other  certainly  by  Dekker,  and  probably 
by  the  others  as  well.  It  is  issued  as  by  Webster  and 
Dekker — either  because  they  originally  had  the  larger 
share,  or  because  they  did  the  editing,  or  because  their 
names  were  at  the  moment  the  more  likely  to  secure  a 
sale,  or  because  they  were  known  as  the  authors  of  the 
play  to  the  publisher.  In  any  case,  it  was  not  the  cus- 
tom to  put  more  than  two  names  to  a  play.  On  the 
whole,  therefore,  one  must  begin  with  an  a  priori  prob- 
ability that  most  of  the  play  as  we  have  it  is  by  Web- 
ster and  Dekker,  but  that  some  is  by  Heywood  or 
Smith  or  Chettle.  In  addition,  the  state  of  the  play 
(the  text  is  very  uneven,  sometimes  fairly  good,  some- 
times terribly  mangled),  and  its  history  of  slashing  and 
patching,  make  it  likely  that  the  different  contributions 
are  fairly  well  mixed  together  by  now.  In  some  places, 
certainly,  a  delicate  reader  will  fancy  he  detects  re- 
peated swift  changes  between  more  than  two  styles.^ 

It  is  obvious,  then,  that  it  is  very  presumptuous 
to  assign  different  portions  of  the  play  with  any  com- 
pleteness to  the  different  authors.  Reading  the  play, 
with  careful  attention  to  style  and  atmosphere,  I  have 

*  Note  especially  the  word  "ostend,"  p.  194. 

*e.  g.  the  change  towards  the  end  of  scene  11,  at  the  top  of 
page  196,  after  Suffolk's  entry. 


APPENDICES  221 

seemed  to  myself  to  recognise  in  the  bulk  of  two  scenes 
and  in  one  or  two  scattered  places  (e.g.  the  opening 
lines  of  the  play)  a  voice  that  may  well  be  that  of  the 
younger  Webster.  Taking,  therefore,  cautiously  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  positive  evidence  from  Dr.  Stoll  and 
Mr.  Pierce,  and  comparing  it  with  my  own  impression 
of  the  play  and  the  general  impression  of  other  critics, 
I  suggest  the  following  conclusions  as  all  that  we  can 
fairly  pretend  to  be  more  than  amiable  dreaming. 
Webster  probably  wrote  scene  2  and  most  of  scene  16. 
No  doubt  he  poured  indistinguishably  forth  other  parts 
of  this  commonplace  bit  of  journalism;  but,  except  one 
or  two  lines,  it  is  impossible  to  pick  them  out.  A  good 
deal  of  the  rest  of  the  play  is  by  Dekker.  Heywood's 
hand  is  occasionally  to  be  suspected. 


Appendix  D. — "Westward  Ho"  and 
"Northward  Ho" 

These  plays  are  so  closely  connected,  and  evidence 
about  either  reacts  so  much  on  the  other,  that  it  is 
convenient  to  consider  them  together. 

Dates. 

These  plays  can  be  dated  fairly  closely. 

Westward  Ho  was  registered  to  print  on  March 
2nd,  1605.    It  was  printed  in  1607. 

Northward  Ho  was  registered  on  August  6th,  1607, 
and  printed  in  that  year. 

Northward  Ho  contains  an  amiable  farcical  attack 
on  Chapman.^  For  this  reason  and  others,  it  must 
have  been  written  as  an  answer  to  Eastward  Ho,  which 
was  registered  to  print  September  4th,  1605,  and  ap- 
peared in  several  editions  in  that  year,  and  was  prob- 
ably written  in  1604,  perhaps  in  1605.^  Eastward  Ho 
was  written,  again,  more  or  less  in  emulous  succession 

*This  is  fairly  conclusively  proved  by  Dr.  StoU  (pp.  65-69).  The 
only  doubtful  point  is  that  Bellaraont  (whom  we  suppose  to  mean 
Chapman)  is  called  "white"  and  "hoary."  Chapman  was  only 
forty-seven  in  1606.  But  even  in  this  age,  when  people  live  so  much 
more  slowly,  they  are  sometimes  silver-haired  before  fifty.  And 
the  other  evidence  is  very  strong. 

'v.  Eastward  Hoe,  ed.  F.  E.  Shelling.  Belles  Lettres  Series, 
Introduction. 

222 


APPENDICES  223 

to  Westward  Ho}  So  we  have  the  order  of  the  plays 
fairly  certain.  Dekker  and  Webster  wrote  theirs  for 
the  Children  of  Paul's;  Eastward  Ho  was  written  for 
the  rival  company,  the  children  of  the  Queen's  Revels, 
by  Chapman,  with  the  help  of  Jonson  and  Marston. 

Westward  Ho,  therefore,  could  have  been  written 
any  time  before  March,  1605.  The  probable  date  of 
Eastward  Ho  makes  it  slightly  desirable  to  put  the 
performance  of  Westward  Ho  back,  at  least,  towards 
the  beginning  of  1604.  There  are  various  references; 
to  Kemp's  London  to  Norwich  Dance  (1600)  ;2  per- 
haps to  James'  Scotch  Knights ;  ^  and  to  the  famous 
siege  of  Ostend.*  Ostend  was  taken  in  September, 
1604,  and  the  second  quotation,  at  least,  looks  as  if 
it  was  written  after  that.  It  may,  however,  have  been 
written  during  the  last  part  of  the  siege.  And  these 
references  may,  of  course,  not  be  of  the  same  date  as 
the  rest  of  the  play.  But  it  seems  fairly  safe  to  date 
it  as  1603  ^  or  1604,  with  a  slight  preference  for  the 
autumn  of  1604.^ 

*  V.  Eastward  Ho.    Prologue.  '  Westward  Ho,  p.  237. 

»  Westward  Ho.  pp.  217,  326.  *  Westward  Ho,  pp.  210,  235. 

''The  end  of  1603,  of  course.  All  the  summer  the  plague  was 
raging. 

"a.  Dr.  StoU  (p.  63)  finds  in  the  Earl's  discovery  {Westward 
Ho,  233),  of  a  hideous  hag  in  the  masked- figure  he  had  thought 
a  beautiful  woman,  a  possible  reminiscence  of  Marston's  Sopho- 
nisba,  which  may  have  been  on  the  stage  in  1603  or  1604.  But  the 
idea  is  a  common  enough  one  in  all  literatures.  And  if  there  is 
a  debt,  it  might  almost  as  easily  be  the  other  way.  In  any  case,  the 
date  is  not  influenced. 

b.  If  the  autumn  of  1604,  then,  of  course,  Eastward  Ho  must  be 
put  on  to  1605. 


224  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Northward  Ho,  then,  must  have  been  written  in  1605, 
1606,  or  1607.  In  Day's  The  Isle  of  Gulls  (printed 
1606)  there  seems  to  be  a  reference  to  these  three 
plays, ^  in  a  passage  that  must  have  been  written  for 
a  first  performance;  which  cuts  out,  at  least,  1607, 
and  the  last  part  of  1606.  Dr.  Stoll  records  also  ^  a 
close  parallel  with  a  passage  in  Marston's  The  Fawn, 
He  thinks  The  Fawn  is  the  originator,  and  that  it  was 
written  in  1606.^  But  he  dates  it  by  a  very  uncertain 
reference  to  an  execution.  It  is  generally  dated  earlier, 
and  Marston  may  have  imitated  Northward  Ho,  or  the 
passages  may,  as  in  another  Marston-Webster  case, 
have  been  taken  independently  otherwhence.  So  the 
safest  date  for  Northward  Ho  is  1605.* 

Sources, 

Westward  Ho  and  Northward  Ho  are  ordinary 
citizen-comedies.  The  sources  of  these  are  generally 
unknown.  The  plots  were  probably  invented  or 
adapted  from  some  current  event  or  anecdote.  As 
Mr.  Arnold  Bennett  says  (thinking  of  such  bourgeois 
subjects  as  these  plays  deal  with),  there  is  no  difficulty 
about  a  plot;  you  can  get  a  plot  any  time  by  going 
into  the  nearest  bar  and  getting  into  conversation  over 

^Ed.  Bullen:  pp.  5,  6.  The  reference  is  the  more  probable  that 
The  Isle  of  Gulls  was  written  for  the  same  company  as  Eastward 
Ho. 

'  P.  16.  "  Stoll,  p.  17. 

*Miss  Hunt  (Thomas  Dekker,  pp.  101-103)  comes  to  much  the 
same  conclusion;  i.e.  Westward  Ho,  1604,  Eastward  Ho,  1604-5, 
Northward  Ho,  1605,  as  probable. 


APPENDICES  225 

a  drink.  The  Elizabethans,  no  doubt,  did  this.  All 
that  was  wanted  was  some  intrigue  on  the  old  citizen's- 
wives-gallants  theme  that  would  allow  of  practical  jok- 
ing, bawdy  talk,  and  a  little  broad  conventional  char- 
acter-drawing. Dr.  Stoll  ^  and  Mr.  Pierce  ^  have 
pointed  out  that  various  incidents  in  these  plays  have 
similarities  in  other  plays  of  Dekker's  earlier  or  later. 
The  "borrowing"  from  Sophonisba  I  have  dealt  with. 
The  ring  story  in  Northward  Ho  is  paralleled  in  Male- 
spini's  Ducento  Novelle,^  as  Dr.  Stoll  points  out.  It 
can  be  traced  further  back  (to  the  detriment  of  Dr. 
StoU's  suggestion  that  it  originated  in  an  exploit  of 
some  attendants  on  Cardinal  Wolsey),  to  number  sixty- 
two  in  La  Sale's  Les  Cent  nouvelles  Nouvelles,  a  collec- 
tion of  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth  century.*  From 
La  Sale  it  could  easily  have  come  into  any  of  the 
Elizabethan  books  of  stories,  directly  or  by  degrees. 
Or  it  might  even  have  been  merely  reinvented. 

Collaboration, 

Dr.  Stoll  has  given  some  pages,  and  Mr.  Pierce  two- 
thirds  of  his  book,  to  an  elaborate  attempt  to  divide 
up  these  plays  between  Dekker  and  Webster.  It  is 
not  possible  here  to  examine  either  their  methods  or 
their  results  in  detail.  I  can  only  suggest  some  prin- 
ciples which  should  be  kept  in  mind  in  attempting  such 
questions,  and  which  they  have  not  always  kept  in  mind, 

*Pp.  72-74. 

^  The  Collaboration  of  Webster  and  Dekker,  Chap.  VI. 

'  Novella  II.,  not  I.,  as  Dr.  Stoll  gives  it. 

*v.  Celio  Malespini  und  seine  Novellen:  Misteli. 


226  JOHN  WEBSTER 

and  summarise  their  results,  indicating  how  far  they 
seem  vahd  and  valuable.  I  shall  mostly  consider  Mr. 
Pierce's  work,  as  it  is  later  and  far  more  detailed  than 
Dr.  Stoll's  and  includes  it.^ 

Dr.  Stoll  finds  that  the  general  outline  and  spirit 
of  the  plays,  the  characters,  and  most  of  the  incidents 
are  repeated  in  Dekker's  other  city-plays.  On  these 
grounds,  and  on  grounds  of  style  and  phrase,  he  gives 
Dekker,  in  a  general  way,  the  whole  of  the  plays.  Mr. 
Pierce  adopts  a  more  systematic  method.  He  employs 
various  tests,  "scientific"  and  "aesthetic,"  separately, 
and  tabulates  and  compares  the  results.  His  tests  are 
of  the  following  kinds ;  parallel  passages ;  use  of  dia- 
lect ;  metrical ;  incidents  ;  "character  and  atmosphere" ; 
and  the  "three-syllable  Latin-word  test,"  an  invention 
of  his  own.  The  last  needs  explanation.  Mr.  Pierce 
discovered  that  the  difference  in  typical  passages  of 
Webster  and  Dekker,  the  difference  of  weight  and 
rhythm,  is  partly  due  to  the  number  of  long  Latin 
words  used  by  the  former.  He  has  made  this  into  a 
regular  and  usable  test,  by  reducing  all  Webster's  and 
Dekker's  plays  to  a  common  line  measure,  and  finding 
the  percentage  of  three-syllable  words  of  Latin  or 
Greek  origin,  in  each  scene  and  act.  An  ingenious 
plan.  The  results  are  superficially  of  immense  decision 
and  value.  Webster's  known  plays  have  a  high  aver- 
age ;  Dekker's  known  plays  a  low  one.  A  few  scenes  in 
these  two  collaborate  plays  have  a  high  average,  and 

*  See  also  a  very  sensible  review  of  Mr.  Pierce's  book  by  Dr.  P. 
Aronstein  in  Beiblatt  zur  Anglia,  1910,  p.  79. 


APPENDICES  227 

the  rest  a  low  one.  There  is  a  wide,  almost  empty  gap 
in  between.  The  conclusion,  especially  if  other  tests 
agree,  is  obvious. 

But  this  test  makes  certain  assumptions  which  Mr. 
Pierce  does  not  seem  to  have  considered.  It  assumes 
that  the  use  of  these  three-syllable  Latin  words  is  al- 
ways independent  of  the  subject-matter.  It  assumes 
that  it  was,  even  at  this  date,  not  only  a  habit  of  Web- 
ster's, but  an  ingrained  one,  and  probably  unconscious. 
If  (and  it  is  very  probable)  he  was  merely  forming  his 
style  at  this  time,  by  imitating  such  writers  as  Marston, 
he  could  and  would  drop  this  trick  a  good  deal,  or  for- 
get to  keep  it  up,  in  writing  this  sort  of  play.  Writers 
are  not  born  polysyllabic.  The  habit  may  supremely 
suit  them;  but  they  acquire  it.  And  the  process  of 
acquiring  it  is  generally  conscious.  When  Webster 
wrote  (or  copied  out) 

"I  remember  nothing. 

There's  nothing  of  so  infinite  vexation 

As  man's  own  thoughts." 
or 

"I  have  caught 

An  everlasting  cold:     I  have  lost  my  voice 

Most  irrecoverably." 

he  knew  what  he  was  doing  as  well  as  Mr.  Henry  James 
does  when  he  writes,  "She  just  charmingly  hunched  her 
eyes  at  him." 

If  the  investigators  of  the  future  draw  up  lists  of 
the  average  number  of  adverbs  to  a  uniform  line  in 
Mr.  Henry  James'  works,  they  will  find,  probably,  that 


228  JOHN  WEBSTER 

in  the  early  works  it  is  practically  normal,  in  the  early- 
middle  period  uneven,  varying  from  chapter  to  chap- 
ter, and  for  the  last  twenty  years  immense.  Who  they 
will  think  wrote  the  early,  and  collaborated  in  the  mid- 
dle, Henry  James's,  it  is  impossible  to  guess. 

That  this  Latinism  could  be  put  on  at  will  we  have 
Dekker's  The  GulVs  Horn-Booh  and  passages  in  his 
more  serious  plays  to  witness.  In  spite  of  that  it  may 
be  admitted  that  a  quite  high  average  in  any  scene  in 
Northward  Ho  or  Westward  Ho,  where  Dekker  would 
have  no  temptation  to  Latinise,  does  point  to  Webster. 
But  what  Mr.  Pierce  does  not  seem  to  realise  is  that 
a  low  average  does  not  point  in  the  same  way  to  Dekker. 
For  as  there  is  no  play  of  this  kind  by  Webster  extant, 
it  is  impossible  to  say  how  much  he  might  have  de- 
scended from  Latinity  at  times.  It  is  all  part  of  the 
general  error  of  taking,  as  Webster's  normal  usages,  his 
practices  in  a  definite  kind  of  play  in  his  mature  period. 
Still,  with  these  restrictions  and  in  this  way,  Mr. 
Pierce's  Latin-word  test  has  a  good  deal  of  value ;  that 
is  to  say,  for  deciding  what  is  Webster's,  not  what  is 
not.  The  only  thing  that  can  be  urged  against  it  is 
that  it  is  unnecessary ;  being  only  a  symptom  of  a  dif- 
ference in  style  which  a  subtle  taste  should  distinguish 
on  its  own  qualities,  or,  if  more,  misleading.  This  is 
mostly  true;  and  the  aesthetic  tests  are  ultimately  the 
most  valuable.  But  then  it  is  so  hard  either  to  fix  or 
to  communicate  them. 

The  tests  of  metre,  incident,  and  character  and  at- 
mosphere seem  to  me  to  have  practically  no  value,  ex- 


APPENDICES  229 

cept  in  so  far  as  "atmosphere"  means  literary  style. 
What  it  mainly  means  is  the  complexion  of  the  whole, 
with  regard  to  which  Westward  Ho  is  of  course  much 
nearer  to,  say,  TJie  Honest  Whore,  than  it  is  to  The 
Duchess  of  Malfi.  No  doubt  there  are  minor,  barely 
visible,  effects  and  individualities  of  metre,  phrase,  or 
character-drawing,  and  turns  of  incident,  which  might 
easily  betray  the  Dekker  of  this  period,  whom  we 
know,  or  even  the  Webster,  whom  we  fear  we  mightn't 
recognise.  Dr.  Stoll,  indeed,  has  used  these  a  little,  for 
distinguishing  Webster.  But  as  a  rule  these  details 
are  just  those  one  cannot  tabulate.  The  grosser  ones, 
that  can  be  defined  and  listed,  are  the  attributes  of  the 
species  of  play,  such  as  a  dramatist  can  put  on  and 
off  at  will.  The  subtler,  less  extricable  peculiarities, 
however,  are  what  influence  the  "unscientific"  critical 
taste  to  feel,  "This  is  Webster!"  and  "This  Dekker!" 
They  have  an  ultimate  voice  in  deciding  attributions, 
though  by  a  diff*erent  method  from  metrical  or  word- 
tests  ;  by  representation  rather  than  plebiscite. 

The  second  trustworthy  kind  of  evidence,  then,  for 
a  passage  or  scene  being  by  some  author,  is  a  percep- 
tion that  the  literary  and  linguistic  style  is  his.  To 
use  this,  which  Swinburne  called  judging  by  the  ear  in- 
stead of  the  fingers,  is  a  very  important  method,  if 
not  so  supreme  as  he  thought.  It  is  without  rules ;  but 
in  this  case  there  are  certain  general  features  of  style 
which  can  be  mentioned,  if  not  tabulated.  For  Dekker 
there  is  the  half-comical,  quick,  repetition  of  phrases, 
that  Dr.  Stoll  has  noticed.     There  is  an  important  un- 


230  JOHN  WEBSTER 

observed  characteristic  of  Webster's,  which  is  ex- 
tremely noticeable  in  his  later  works,  and  seems  to  ap- 
pear in  those  portions  of  these  plays  which,  on  stylistic 
and  other  grounds,  we  are  led  to  believe  his.  It  is  in 
marked  contrast  to  Dekker.  It  is  the  use  of  involved 
sentences  with  subordinate  clauses,  as  against  a  style 
where  the  ideas  are  expressed  in  a  series  of  simpler, 
shorter,  co-ordinate  sentences.  Northward  Ho,  II.  2, 
one  of  the  only  certainly  Websterian  scenes  in  the  two 
plays,  strikes  the  ear  immediately  as  different  in  this 
way.  The  whole  ring  of  the  sentences  is — mainly  for 
this  reason — slower,  deeper,  more  solemn.  The  Ger- 
mans have  invented  a  way  of  distinguishing  collabora- 
tors. Read  the  play,  they  say,  and  you  find  your 
voice  instinctively  assumes  a  different  pitch  for  the 
work  of  different  authors.  They  profess  to  tell  to  half 
a  sentence  where  Webster  begins  and  Dekker  leaves  off. 
One  can  smile  at  their  whole  claim.  But,  for  these  two 
authors,  it  is  not,  essentially,  unmeaning. 

The  third  admissible  way  of  dividing  the  authorship 
of  these  plays,  is  by  parallel  passages.  It  is  not  gen- 
erally kept  in  mind  that  if  this  method  is  used  for  de- 
ciding between  collaborators,  it  implies  an  assumption 
that  the  collaboration  was  of  a  certain  kind,  namely, 
by  taking  so  many  scenes  each.  This  was  the  usual 
practice  in  contemporary  collaboration,  we  know;  and 
it  is,  obviously,  far  the  quickest  and  easiest  way,  as  a 
rule.  So  we  have  a  right,  generally,  to  suppose  that 
collaboration  was  of  this  sort,  and,  therefore,  that  a 
certain  parallel  or  repetition  is  strong  proof  of  au- 


APPENDICES  231 

thorship  of  that  scene.  All  the  same,  there  is  always 
the  possibility  of  both  authors  working  over  the  same 
scene,  in  which  case,  of  course,  a  parallel  helps  to  prove 
nothing  except  its  own  source.  In  the  present  case, 
though  we  do  not  know  so  certainly  as  with  Webster's 
earlier  plays,  Sir  Thomas  Wyatt  or  Christmas  comes 
hut  once  a  year,  that  the  collaboration  was  real  and 
contemporary,  it  is  very  likely.  The  likehhood  is  made 
smaller  than  usual  by  the  facts  that  Dekker  was  a 
much  quicker  worker  than  Webster,  and  that  he  was 
by  standing  and  experience  the  senior  partner.  He 
might  very  well  have  gone  over  Webster's  scenes. 

On  the  whole  then  a  single  parallel  or  repetition 
does  not  prove  much,  in  these  plays ;  a  row  of  them,  in 
one  scene,  goes  far  to  establish  the  authorship  of  that 
scene. 

Mr.  Pierce  has  collected  a  great  number  of  possible 
parallels,  most  of  them  insignificant,  some  of  them 
very  valuable.  In  using  them,  one  must  remember  that 
we  have  only  a  very  few,  and  quite  different,  later  plays 
by  Webster  to  draw  on,  and  a  great  many,  some  con- 
temporary and  similar,  of  Dekker's.  Once  again,  ab- 
sence of  proof  that  a  scene  is  Webster's  does  not  prove 
it  is  not. 

By  these  methods  of  proof,  and  any  outstanding 
evidence  of  another  kind,  one  reaches  much  the  same 
conclusions  as  Mr.  Pierce;  but,  I  think,  they  should 
be  applied  differently.  In  Northward  Ho,  II.  2,  and 
the  first  part  of  V.,  are  almost  certainly  in  the  main  by 
Webster.     In  Westward  Ho  there  is  not,  it  seems  to 


232  JOHN  WEBSTER 

me,  the  same  certainty.  But  I.  1  and  III.  3  show  very 
strong  traces  of  his  presence.     With  Northward  Ho, 

1.  1  and  III.  1  the  probability  is  smaller,  but  still  con- 
siderable. There  are  also  one  or  two  phrases  or  sen- 
tences scattered  about  the  plays  that  arrest  one's  at- 
tention as  recognisably  Webster's,  or  at  least  not  Dek- 
ker's.  But  these  do  not  extend  their  atmosphere  be- 
yond themselves.  There  are  these  few  scenes,  which, 
with  varying  degrees  of  probability,  can  be  given  to 
Webster.  There  are  a  few  more  {Westward  Ho,  II.  1, 

2,  V.  3 :  Northward  Ho,  IV.  1 )  where  all  the  evidence 
points  to  Dekker  being  mainly  responsible.  In  the 
rest,  while  we  cannot  detect  the  Webster  of  1612,  we 
have  no  right  to  deny  the  presence  of  the  Webster  of 
1605.  In  any  case  the  collaboration  seems  to  have  been 
of  an  intricate  and  over-laid  nature. 

To  pretend  to  more  precise  knowledge  is,  I  think, 
silly. 

Since  I  wrote  this.  Miss  Hunt's  book  on  Thomas 
Dekker  has  appeared.  On  pages  106,  107,  and  108  she 
discusses  the  shares  of  Webster  and  Dekker  in  these 
plays.  She  principally  follows  Fleay,  whose  methods 
were  rough.  She  discusses  the  responsibility  for  the 
plots,  which  other  critics  have  been  inclined  to  leave 
vaguely  to  Dekker.  She  would  give  most  of  it  to  Web- 
ster, and  also  "the  more  unusual  subtle  or  abnormal 
incidents" ;  the  device  of  the  diamond  in  Westward  Ho 
and  that  of  the  ring  in  Northward  Ho,  perhaps  also 
Greeneshield's  betrayal  of  his  wife,  although  that  may 
have  been  borrowed  from  Eastward  Ho,     Also  Jus- 


APPENDICES  233 

tiniano's  disguise  as  a  hag;  and  his  and  Mayberry's 
jealousy.  Other  kinds  of  evidence  she  does  not  con- 
sider. In  Westward  Ho  she  finds  signs  of  incomplete 
collaboration  and  change  of  plan  in  construction.  Still 
following  Fleay  she  thinks  Webster  wrote  most  of  Acts 
L,  II.,  and  III.,  and  some  of  IV. ;  Dekker,  the  rest. 
Northward  Ho  is  more  homogeneous.  Dekker  is  given 
the  Chapman-ragging  and  the  Doll  scenes ;  Webster  the 
rest.     Dekker  probably  went  over  the  whole. 

Her  proofs  and  judgments  are  very  superficial,  and 
almost  valueless.  It  is,  perhaps,  probable  that  Web- 
ster had  more  share  in  the  planning  of  the  plots  and 
incidents  than  he  has  been  allowed.  Her  assignments 
in  general  are  based  on  a  feeling  that  these  two  plays 
are  "gross,"  "offensive,"  and  "sinning  against  the 
light,"  that  her  protege  Dekker,  being  a  pure-minded 
man,  can  have  had  little  to  do  with  them,  and  that 
Webster  "who  dealt  with  lust"  must  be  held  guilty. 
Her  sex,  or  her  nationality,  or  both,  have  caused  in 
her  a  curious  agitation  of  mind  whenever  she  ap- 
proaches these  plays.  This  prejudice  destroys  what 
little  value  her  very  cursory  investigation  of  the  prob- 
lems of  their  authorship  might  otherwise  have  had. 


Appendix  E. — "The  Malcontent" 

The  Malcontent  was  published  in  1604,  in  two  edi- 
tions.   The  title-page  of  the  first  reads : 

THE 
MALCONTENT. 

BY    JOHN     MARSTON. 

The   title-page   of   the    second    reads: 

THE 
MALCONTENT. 

AUGMENTED    BY    MARSTON. 

WITH    THE    ADDITIONS    PLATED    BY    THE    KIKGS 
MAJESTIES   SERVANTS. 

WaiTTEN    BY    JOHN"    WEBSTER. 

The  second  edition  differs  from  the  first  in  having  an 
Induction,  and  the  insertion  of  twelve  passages  in  the 
play. 

Much  fuss  has  been  made  about  the  amount  of  the 
play  that  Webster  wrote.     Dr.  Stoll  ^  has  conclusively 
shown  that  all  we  can  deduce  to  be  Webster's  is  the 
*Pp.  55-60, 

234 


APPENDICES  235 

Induction ;  and  Professor  Vaughan  has  called  attention 
to  a  final  piece  of  evidence — that  the  Induction  itself 
practically  says  that  this  is  the  case. 

The  matter  is  quite  clear.  The  full-stop  after 
"Servants"  on  the  second  title-page  is  what  Dr.  Stoll 
calls  "purely  inscriptional."  That  the  whole  theory 
of  Elizabethan  punctuation  rests  on  a  psychological, 
not,  as  now,  on  a  logical  basis,  has  recently  been  shown 
with  great  force  by  Mr.  Simpson.^  The  whole  look  of 
the  page  makes  it  obvious  that  the  intention  was  to 
connect  Webster  with  the  "Additions,"  and  only  with 
the  additions,  and  to  make  Marston  responsible  for  the 
augmentations  as  well  as  the  bulk  of  the  play.  An  aes- 
thetic judgment  of  the  play  declares  that  the  extra 
passages  are  all  Marston's  and  that  the  Induction  is 
probably  not  by  Marston  and  probably  is  by  Webster. 
And  Burbadge,  in  the  Induction,  describing  how  the 
play  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  King's  Servants  (from 
the  Children  of  the  Queen's  Revels)  and  being  asked 
"What  are  your  additions?"  makes  answer,  "Sooth, 
not  greatly  needful;  only  as  your  salad  to  your  great 
feast,  to  entertain  a  little  more  time,  and  to  abridge 
the  not-received  custom  of  music  in  our  theatre."  That 
probably,  though  not  quite  necessarily,  identifies  the 
"additions"  with  the  Induction.  There  are  three  pos- 
sible theories;  that  Marston  wrote  The  Malcontent 
(first  edition)   and  the  extra  passages,  and  Webster 

^Shakespearian  Punctuation.  See  also  Professor  Grierson's  re- 
marks on  Elizabethan  punctuation,  The  Poems  of  John  Donne,  vol. 
ii.,  pp.  cxxi.-cxxiv. 


236  JOHN  WEBSTER 

the  Induction;  that  Marston  wrote  The  Malcontent 
(first  edition)  and  Webster  the  extra  passages,  and 
probably  the  Induction ;  or  that  originally  Marston 
and  Webster  wrote  the  play  together,  and  that  for 
some  reason  only  Marston's  name  appeared  on  the 
title-page.  I  think  there  is  no  reason  to  believe  the 
third,  every  reason  not  to  believe  the  second,  and  sev- 
eral reasons  to  believe  the  first.  I  do  not  think  the 
arguments  for  The  Malcontent  dating  from  1600,  and 
for  the  "augmentations"  being  really  restorations  by 
Marston  of  cut  pieces  of  his  play  in  its  first  state,  are 
decisive.  But  I  think  the  case  stands  without  these 
conclusions.^ 

Date, 

As  the  first  edition  appeared  without  the  Induction 
during  1604,  and  the  second  with  it  in  the  same  year, 
and  as  it  was  obviously  written  for  a  special  piratical 
revival  by  the  King's  Majesty's  Servants,  who  claim 
the  second  edition,  it  is  fair  to  suppose  that  the  In- 
duction was  written  during  1604. 

*  On  the  date  of  The  Malcontent  Dr.  Stoll  goes  off  pursuing  the 
wildest  of  geese  through  the  undergrowth  of  a  footnote.  He 
"proves"  a  phrase  to  be  in  the  "Ur-Hamlet"  by  taking  it  for 
granted  that  a  play  printed  in  1604  is  exactly  as  it  was  when  it 
was  written  in  1600.    The  old  assumption  of  the  integrity  of  plays. , 


Appendix  F. — "The  White  Devil" 

Date. 

The  White  DevU  was  printed  in  1612.  It  obviously 
belongs  to  the  same  period  as  The  Duchess  of  Malfi. 
That  it  is  the  earlier  of  the  two  is  probable  on  general 
grounds,  and  proved  by  the  advance  of  metrical  li- 
cense ^  and  the  absence  of  phrases  and  adaptations 
from  the  Arcadia,  which  are  present  in  all  Webster's 
later  work.^ 

There  are  various  clues,  of  more  or  less  relevance, 
to  its  date: 

Mr.  Percy  Simpson  has  pointed  out  ^  that  the  puz- 
zling and  much  emended  passage  about  Perseus  (p.  21 ; 
last  line)  is  an  allusion  to  Jonson's  Masque  of  Queens 
(1609);  a  work  Webster  knew,  for  he  borrows  in  A 
Monumental  Column  from  the  dedication  to  it. 

P.  23.     MoNTiCELSo.     Away  with  her! 

Take   her   hence! 
ViTTORiA.     A  rape!  a  rape! 

MONTICELSO.       How? 

ViTTORiA.     Yes,  you  have  ravished  Justice; 

Forced  her  to  do  your  pleasure. 

*  V.  StoU,  p.  190,  metrical  table. 

»  F.  Crawford,  Collectanea,  i.,  20-46.  It  is  very  noticeable,  and 
only  to  be  explained  by  Webster  having  filled  his  notebook  from 
the  Arcadia  after  The  White  Devil  and  before  The  Duchess  of 
I,  A  Mormmental  Column,  and  The  Devil's  Law-case. 

*  Modern  Language  Review:  January  1907. 

237 


238  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Dr.  StoU  suggests  that  Vittoria's  cry,  in  its  sudden- 
ness as  well  as  in  the  words,  is  very  like  Sebastian's 
in  Tourneur's  The  Atheisfs  Tragedy,  I.  4.  But  any 
connection  between  the  two  is  doubtful ;  if  there  is  any, 
Tourneur  may  have  imitated  Webster ;  and  anyhow  the 
date  of  The  Atheisfs  Tragedy  is  still  quite  uncertain 
— 1607-1611  is  the  most  definite  limit  one  can  venture, 
and  even  that  rather  depends  on  accepting  the  anony- 
mous Revenger^s  Tragedy  as  Tourneur's.  This  pas- 
sage is  more  likely  to  be  connected  with  The  Tragedy 
of  Chahoty  V.  11,  122,  "unto  this  he  added  a  most 
prodigious  and  fearful  rape,  a  rape  even  upon  Justice 
itself.  .  .  ."  Professor  Parrott  thinks  Chapman  may 
have  written  this  (it  is  in  his  part  of  the  play)  about 
1612.  And  Webster  admired  and  imitated  Chapman. 
But  the  whole  thing  is  too  cloudy  for  the  resemblance 
to  be  more  than  interesting. 

The  number  of  references  to  Ireland  in  the  play  is 
remarkable.^  Either  Webster  had  been  in  Ireland,  or 
he  had  been  hearing  about  it,  or  he  had  been  reading  a 
book  on  it.  If  it  was  a  book,  Barnaby  Rich's  A  New 
Description  of  Ireland,  1610,  has  been  suggested.  It 
is  very  probable ;  for  the  book  mentions  the  various  sub- 
jects of  Webster's  references.  But  as  there  is  no  ver- 
bal connection,  and  as  they  are  all  things  one  could 
easily  pick  up  by  hearsay,  the  proof  is  not  conclusive. 
No  doubt,  too,  there  were  other  books  on  Ireland  at 

*See  p.  6.  Irish  gamesters:  p.  16,  no  snakes  in  Ireland:  p.  28, 
Irish  rebels  selling  heads:  p.  29  "like  the  wild  Irish.  .  .  .":  p  31, 
Irish  funerals. 


APPENDICES  239 

the  time  which  might  have  contained  such  obvious  jour- 
nahstic  prattle  as  this.  Still,  Rich's  book  is  the  best 
explanation  of  Webster's  mind  being  so  full  of  Irish 
facts  at  the  time:  and  the  references  are  scattered 
enough  to  make  a  little  against  them  having  been  intro- 
duced in  a  revision.  For  what  this  sort  of  evidence  is 
worth,  it  points  to  1610  or  after. 

Dr.  Stoll  attaches  importance  to  the  preface  and 
postscript.  These,  it  would  in  any  case  be  extremely 
probable,  were  written  in  1612  for  the  publication 
of  the  book.  And  a  pretty  conclusive  borrowing  of 
phrase  from  Jonson's  preface  to  Cat  aline  (1611)^  con- 
firms this.  Dr.  Stoll  thinks  the  tone  of  the  preface 
shows  that  the  performance  was  recent.  It  is  difficult 
to  see  why.  Webster  merely  says  that  the  play  has 
been  performed,  without  much  success.  His  only  hint 
about  the  time  that  has  elapsed  since  lies  in  "and  that, 
since  that  time  [^i.e.  the  time  of  the  performance],  I 
have  noted  most  of  the  people  that  come  to  that  play- 
house resemble  those  ignorant  asses,  who,  visiting  sta- 
tioners' shops,  their  use  is  not  to  inquire  for  good 
books  but  new  books.  .  .  ."  This  looks  as  if  some  time 
had  gone  by  between  the  performance  and  the  writing 
of  the  preface.  He  had  had  time  to  see  and  deplore 
The  White  Devil  being  forgotten  by  the  "ignorant 
asses"  who  only  wanted  "new"  goods.  An  interval  of 
some  months  should  be  allowed  at  least. 

The  preface  gives  the  further  information  that  the 

*See  Stoll,  pp.  20,  21.     Webster  borrows  most  of  this  preface 
from  prefaces  of  Jonson  and  Dekker. 


240  JOHN  WEBSTER 

performance  had  been  in  winter,  and  that  the  play  had 
taken  a  long  time  in  writing. 

There  is  one  more  point.  Dekker,  writing  an  Epistle 
Dedicatory  to  //  This  be  not  a  Good  Play  ^  addressed 
to  the  Queen's  Servants  (who  produced  The  White 
Devil),  wishes  well  to  a  new  play  by  a  "worthy  friend" 
of  his.  It  has  been  suggested  that  this  means  The 
White  Devil.  Dekker  and  Webster  were  old  friends, 
and  the  vague  complimentary  epithets  of  the  play 
apply. ^  It  may  be  so.  But  as  between  twenty  and 
thirty  new  plays  were  produced  every  year,^  and  the 
Queen's  Servants,  no  doubt,  contributed  their  share, 
there  were  a  good  many  other  plays  Dekker  might  have 
been  thinking  of,  and  we  cannot  regard  this  as  more 
than  a  possible  conjecture.  //  This  be  not  a  Good  Play 
was  probably  written  and  played  in  1610  or  1611.  The 
Epistle  Dedicatory  for  the  printed  edition  would  prob- 
ably be  written  for  the  occasion,  i.e.  in  1612  or  the 
end  of  1611.  So  any  weight  this  conjecture  has  would 
point  to  Webster's  play  being  produced  in  the  begin- 
ning of  1612.* 

*  Printed  1612. 

'"Such  brave  Triumphs  of  Poesy  and  elaborate  industry  .  .  ." 
'  V.  Schelling,  Elizabethan  Drama,  ii.  pp.  371,  373.    Malone  and 

Fleay  both  suggest  an  average  of  twenty-three  or  four  a  year. 

This  period  was  more  prolific  than  the  average,  of  course.     For 

1601-1611  Professor  Schelling  surmises  a  yearly  average  of  nearer 

thirty. 

*  Dr.  StoU  offers  the  additional  proof  that  Dekker  is  speaking  of 
a  maiden  effort,  which  The  White  Devil  is.  Mere  assumptions. 
Dekker  does  not  say  the  object  of  his  interest  is  a  maiden  work. 
And  nobody  can  state  that  The  White  Devil  is. 


APPENDICES  241 

The  similarity  of  style  and  atmosphere  and  the  close 
resemblance  of  a  great  many  passages^  (not  verbal 
repetitions,  far  more  subtle  and  convincing  things  than 
that)  make  it  desirable  to  put  The  White  Devil  and 
The  Duchess  of  Malfl  as  close  together  as  possible. 
The  tenuous  evidence  we  have  noticed  points,  if  any- 
where at  all,  to  agreement  with  this — that  is,  to  put- 
ting The  White  Devil  on  towards  its  final  hmit  of  1612. 
Acknowledging  that  it  is  all  quite  uncertain,  I  think 
it  is  most  probable  that  the  play  was  written  during 
1611  and  performed  at  the  end  of  that  year  or  in 
January  or  February,  1612.  It  may  have  been  writ- 
ten 1610  and  performed  1610-1611.  It  would  need 
some  strong  new  evidence  to  put  it  back  further. 

Sources. 

Some  time  and  trouble  have  been  spent  in  seeking 
an  exact  printed  source  for  The  White  Devil,  but,  so 
far,  in  vain.  The  actual  events,  which  took  place  in 
the  end  of  the  sixteenth  century — Vittoria  was  born 
in  1557,  was  murdered  in  1585 — were  well-known.^ 
Did  Webster  get  the  story  from  an  accurate  history, 
from  some  romantic  version,  or  from  hearsay?  One 
can  only  surmise.  Professor  Vaughan,  who  goes  at 
greatest  length  into  this  question,  thinks  it  quite  pos- 
sible the  source  was  a  novel  or  play,  or  an  oral  account, 

^See,  for  examples,  Sampson,  Introduction  to  The  White  Devil, 
etc.,  pp.  xli.-xliii.  and  Stoll,  pp.  80-82. 

^  For  detailed  accounts  see  D.  Gnoli,  Vittoria  Accoramhoni.  J. 
A.  Symonds,  in  Italian  By-ways  (1883) :  L.  M'Cracken,  A  Page  of 
Forgotten  History. 


242  JOHN  WEBSTER 

but  is  most  in  favour  of  Webster  having  read  some 
fairly  accurate  contemporary  account,  and  altered  it 
for  dramatic  purposes.  Webster's  unusually  accurate 
pronunciation  of  Italian  names,  and  his  quoting  Tasso,^ 
allow  us  to  believe  he  may  have  known  Italian.  But  the 
tale  may  well  have  got  into  an  English  or  French  ver- 
sion by  1610.  The  differences  between  Webster's  ver- 
sion and  the  facts  are  queer.  Many  of  them  look  cer- 
tainly as  if  they  had  been  made  consciously  (by  Web- 
ster or  someone  else)  for  dramatic  purposes;  such  as — 
besides  the  additions  of  madness  and  murders — the 
toning  down  of  Lodovico  to  make  him  a  minor  figure, 
and  the  purification  of  Isabella.  But  there  are  others 
that  have  no  such  obvious  point,  the  exchange  of  names 
between  Marcello  and  Flamineo,  the  writing  of  Monti- 
celso  for  Montalto,^  and  Paul  IV.  for  Sixtus  V.  The 
first  of  these  may  be  purposeful.  Even  one  who  has 
not  read  the  Sixth  ^neid  may  be  able  to  perceive  that 
Marcello  is  a  pure  young  hero  and  Flamineo  an  amaz- 
ing villain.  Is  it  fanciful  to  more  than  suspect  that 
The  White  Devil  would  be  less  effective  if  he  were  called 
Flamineo  who  died  so  innocently,  and  a  Marcello  playeii 
amazing  tricks  with  bulletless  pistols,  or  screamed  in 
mock-death : 

*  The  Duchess  of  Malf,,  p.  78. 

*Dr.  Greg  {Modern  Language  Quarterly:  Dec.  1900)  suggests 
that  Webster  may  have  misread  (in,  perhaps,  a  MSS.  account) 
Moncelto  for  Montalto,  and  euphonised  it  into  Monticelso.  But 
the  other  difficulties  remain. 


APPENDICES  243 

"O  I  smell  soot. 
Most  stinking  soot!     The  chimney  is  a-fire! 
My  liver's  parboil'd  like  Scotch  holly-bread; 
There's  a  plumber  laying  pipes  in  my  guts, 

it  scalds !" 


It  is  not  for  nothing  that  you  dare  not  call  a  hero 
Lord  John  or  a  villain  George.  And  Webster,  who  had 
above  all  things  a  nose  for  irrelevant  details  that  inex- 
plicably trick  you,  unconscious,  into  the  tone  he  desires, 
may  have  had  a  purpose  in  writing  also  Paulus  for 
Sixtus,  Monticelso  for  Montalto.  Still,  it  is  hard  to 
think  memory  or  report  or  notes  did  not  play  him  false. 
On  the  other  hand  such  minute  details  from  the 
actual  story  have  been  preserved  by  Webster — names, 
the  summer-house  by  the  Tiber,  and  so  on — that  it  is 
difficult  to  imagine  that  he  got  it  from  any  scanty  or 
oral  report.  And  there  are  certain  consideration^ 
which  seem  to  favour  his  having  worked  from  some  ex- 
tensive version,  whether  dramatic  or  in  pamphlet  form. 
Why  should  Brachiano  and  the  Conjuror  conduct  their 
interview  in  Vittoria's  house  (p.  18)?  No  reason  is 
given  for  the  absurdity.  There  is  an  equally  unex- 
plained and  apparently  pointless  incident  in  the  trial- 
scene  ;  where  Brachiano  refuses  a  chair,  and  sits  on  his 
cloak  (pp.  19  and  22),  to  show,  one  gathers,  his  con- 
tempt for  the  Court.  The  labour  and  time  Webster 
spent  on  the  play,  and  his  care  in  publishing  this  edi- 
tion to  wipe  out  the  failure  of  the  performance,  forbid 
our  explaining  these  things  by  hurry  in  composition,  or 
by  the  text  being  printed  from  an  acting  version.   They 


244  JOHN  WEBSTER 

might  well  be  the  result  of  Webster's  obvious  lack  of 
ordinary  skill  in  dramatising  a  story  of  which  he  had 
a  lengthy  version  before  him.  Such  incidents  as  Fran- 
cisco's sight  of  Isabella's  ghost,  and  the  spectacular 
and  fairly  accurate  ceremony  of  choosing  a  Pope,  as 
well  as  the  divergencies  in  the  characters  of  Francisco 
and  Flamineo,  as  the  play  proceeds,  also  fit  in  well  with 
this  theory. 

If  Webster  was  working  from  some  detailed  account, 
it  might  either  be  a  play  or  a  narrative.  In  favour  of 
the  play  are  some  of  the  extraordinary  old-fashioned 
tags  in  The  White  Devil,  and  particularly  the  amazing 
mixture  of  extremely  fine  and  true  lines  and  distress- 
ingly ludicrous  couplets  or  phrases  in  the  final  scene 
(though  such  incongruities  are  far  more  possible  for 
Webster  than  for  any  other  great  writer  of  the  period). 
In  this  case,  the  characteristics  of  the  dramatisation 
are  due  to  the  earlier  play-wright. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  general  line  of  the  play  gives 
the  impression  that  Webster  himself  dramatised  it  di- 
rectly. 

In  any  case,  from  the  details  of  names  mentioned 
above,  it  looks  as  if  someone,  either  Webster  or  an 
intermediate,  had  read  some  accurate  account  with 
care,  making  a  few  notes  perhaps,  had  let  it  simmer 
into  shape  in  his  mind,  the  characters  taking  life  and 
individuality,  and  then,  later,  written  it  out.  Only  so 
can  the  mistakes  of  memory  be  explained.  Whether 
it  was  Webster  who  did  this,  or  whether,  as  Professor 


APPENDICES  245 

Vaughan  implies,  he  had  someone  else's  account  before 
him  as  he  worked,  it  is  impossible  to  say. 

The  State  of  the  Play. 

The  White  Devil  is  certainly  entirely  Webster's.  It 
is  also  almost  certain  we  have  the  whole  play.  There 
are  no  sure  traces  of  revision  for  acting,  or  of  abbrevi- 
ation. Webster  obviously,  from  his  Preface,  brought 
the  play  out  with  great  self-consciousness  and  care,  and 
a  desire  to  see  its  merits  recognised.  So  he  would 
naturally  print  it  complete.  And  both  the  Preface  and 
general  probabilities  point  to  it  having  only  been  played 
once,  not  very  successfully,  before  publication.  So  we 
need  not  suspect  our  copy  of  having  been  revised  for  a 
revival. 


Appendix  G. — "The  Duchess  of  Malfi" 

Date. 

The  history  of  the  various  opinions  about  the  date 
of  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  is  both  entertaining  and  in- 
structive. Dyce  used  to  guess  at  1616.  Fleay  put  it 
back  to  161S,  a  date  which  many  slight  indications 
favoured.  These  were  mainly  on  stylistic  and  general 
grounds.  Professor  Vaughan,  however,  in  1900,  made 
a  suggestion  which  Dr.  Stoll,  in  1905,  worked  out  and 
regarded  as  providing  conclusive  evidence.  So,  accord- 
ing to  the  ordinary  methods  of  dating  plays,  it  did. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  detail  Dr.  Stoll's  arguments. 
They  refer  to  the  oddly  introduced  passage  in  I,  i.  (p. 
59)  on  the  French  King  and  his  court.  Dr.  Stoll 
rightly  says  it  is  very  probable  a  passage  like  this  in  an 
Elizabethan  play  would  refer  to  current  events.  He 
exhaustively  proves  that  it  does  exactly  fit  what  hap- 
pened in  France  in  the  early  part  of  1617,  when  Louis 
XIII.  had  the  evil  counsellor  Concini  killed,  "quitted" 
his  palace  of  "infamous  persons,"  and  established  a 
"most  provident  council" ;  events  which  made  some  stir 
in  England  at  the  time.  As  all  this  would  have  ap- 
peared in  a  different  light  in  1618  or  after,  and  as  there 
is  other  evidence  that  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  was  being 
played  in  England  at  the  end  of  1617,  we  seem  to  have 
the  date,  the  latter  part  of  1617,  fixed  with  unusual 

246 


APPENDICES  247 

certainty.^  It  is  rare  to  be  able  to  be  so  certain  and  so 
precise  about  an  Elizabethan  play.  And  having  the 
date  of  composition  of  some  thirty  lines  fixed,  people 
would  no  doubt  have  gone  on  for  ever  believing  they 
had  the  date  of  the  whole  fixed ;  had  not  Dr.  Wallace, 
delving  in  the  Record  Office,  discovered  that  William 
Ostler,  who  played  Antonio,  died  on  December  16th, 
1614  !  2  The  explanation,  of  course,  is  that  The  Duchess 
of  Malfl  was  written  and  performed  before  December, 
1614,  and  revived  with  additions  in  1617.  All  the  evi- 
dence we  have  shows  that  this  habit  of  altering  a  play 
and  putting  in  topical  references  whenever  it  was  re- 
vived, was  universal.  Our  modern  reverence  for  the 
exact  written  word  is  the  result  of  regarding  plays  as 
literary  objects,  and  of  our  too  careful  antiquarian 
view  of  art.  The  Elizabethans  would  have  thought  it 
as  absurd  not  to  alter  a  play  on  revival  as  we  think 
it  to  do  so.  They  healthily  knew  that  the  life  of  a  play 
was  in  its  performance,  and  that  the  more  you  inter- 
ested people  by  the  performance,  the  better  it  was.  The 
written  words  are  one  kind  of  raw  material  for  a  per- 
formance; not  the  very  voice  of  God.  So,  naturally, 
they  changed  the  play  each  time ;  and  when  we  have  the 
text  of  a  play,  all  we  can  feel  in  the  least  certain  about, 
is  that  we  have  it  something  as  it  was  for  the  latest 

*See,  for  instance,  Professor  Schelling,  Elizabethan  Drama,  vol. 
i,  p.  590.  "This  fixes  the  date  of  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  at  a  time 
later  than  April,  1617,  and  puts  to  rest  once  and  for  all  former 
surmises  on  the  subject."   This  eternal  rest  lasted  nearly  five  years. 

» See  The  Times,  Oct.  2  and  4,  1909. 


248  JOHN  WEBSTER 

previous  revival.  Editors  and  critics  have  come  to  ad- 
mit this,  in  general.  But  in  individual  instances  they 
never  remember  to  allow  for  it.  Occasionally,  as  here, 
other  circumstances  are  discovered,  and  put  them  right. 
But,  on  the  whole,  the  common  credulous  assumption 
of  certainty  about  dates  in  Elizabethan  literature  is  as 
startling  to  an  onlooker  as  the  credulous  assumption  of 
certainty  about  authorship. 

The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  then,  was  acted  before  Decem- 
ber, 1614;  and  as  Webster  obviously  took  as  long  over 
it  as  he  confessedly  did  over  The  White  DevU,  the  latest 
date  we  can  give  him  for  writing  it  is  during  the  whole 
year  of  1614.  As  it  is  later  than  The  White  Devil,  we 
do  not  want  to  put  it  back  beyond  1612,  though  as  The 
White  DeviVs  date  is  uncertain  we  could  do  so. 

Strong  internal  evidence  for  the  date  of  The  Duchess 
of  Malfi  has,  however,  been  pointed  out  by  Mr.  Craw- 
ford.^ His  arguments  rest  mainly  on  the  great  sim- 
ilarity between  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  and  A  Monumental 
Column.  These  are  connected  far  more  closely  than  any 
of  Webster's  works  in  several  ways.  The  poem  repeats 
both  more  words  and  lines  and  more  ideas  from  The 
Duchess  of  Malfi  than  from  any  of  the  other  plays.  In 
metre  it  is,  allowing  for  the  different  styles,  nearer.  If 
you  examine  the  particular  sources  Webster  borrowed 
from,  the  resemblance  becomes  even  more  obvious.  In 
The  White  Devil  he  does  not  borrow  from  Sidney's  Ar- 
cadia at  all.    In  The  DeviVs  Law-Case  the  borrowing  is 

^Collectanea,  Series  i.  pp.  20-46,  and  especially  Series  ii.  pp. 
1-63. 


APPENDICES  249 

faint  and  patchy.  In  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  and  A  Morv- 
umenial  Column  the  borrowing  is  incessant  and  similar, 
and  includes  imitation  of  style.  Another  work  both 
pieces  borrow  from,  and  only  these  two  pieces  among 
Webster's,  is  Donne's  An  Anatomy  of  the  World,  which 
was  published  in  1612.^  There  are  also  ^  in  The  Duch- 
ess of  Malfi  several  imitations  and  borrowings  of  phrase 
from  another  book  of  1612,  Chapman's  Petrarch's 
Seven  Penitential  Psalms.  But  the  similarity  itself  of 
A  Monumental  Column  and  The  Duchess  of  Malfi  puts 
the  date  of  the  play  further  on  than  this.  A  Monumen- 
tal Column  is  an  elegy  written  in  memory  of  Prince 
Henry,  who  died  on  November  6th,  1612.  It  was  pub- 
lished in  1613,  with  similar  elegies  of  Tourneur's  and 
Heywood's.  It  appears  to  have  been  rather  belated,  for 
(lines  259-268)  he  refers  to  other  elegies  that  had  al- 
ready  appeared,  and  adds: 

"For  he's  a  reverend  subject  to  be  penn'd 
Only  by  his  sweet  Homer  and  my  friend." 

i.e.,  only  Chapman  should  write  about  the  dead  Prince. 
From  this  and  from  various  reminiscences  in  A  Monu- 
mental Column^  Mr.  Crawford  deduces  that  Webster 
must  have  seen  Chapman's  Epicedium  on  Prince  Henry. 
I  do  not  think  it  is  proved ;  for  the  passage  may  only 
mean  that  Chapman  ought  to  write  an  elegy.  In  any 
case.  Chapman's  poem  followed  the  Prince's  death  so 

^In  its  entirety.    Without  The  Second  Armiversary  in  1611.   But 
Webster  borrows  from  the  whole. 
'  Crawford  Collectanea,  ii.  55-58. 


250  JOHN  WEBSTER 

closely  (as  the  other  elegies  Webster  refers  to  also  may 
well  have  done)  that  we  cannot  put  A  Monumental  Col- 
umn much  later  for  this.  But  (lines  102-5)  there  is  a 
probable,  though  not  certain,  reference  to  Chapman's 
The  Masque  of  The  Middle  Temple  performed  Febru- 
ary 15,  1613.  A  Monumental  Column,  therefore,  may 
be  dated  any  time  in  the  half-year  December,  1612- 
May  1613,  with  a  slight  preference  for  February  and 
March  1613.  As  The  Duchess  of  Malfl  was  certainly 
before  the  end  of  1614,  and  certainly  after  the  begin- 
ning of  1612,  and  as  there  is  so  much  evidence  that  the 
play  and  the  poem  were  being  written  at  the  same  time, 
we  may  date  the  play  with  fair  certainty  at  1613,  in- 
cluding perhaps  the  latter  part  of  1612. 

There  is  no  other  evidence  of  any  value  for  the  date 
of  The  Duchess  of  Malfl.  It  may  appear  that  I  have 
been  trying  to  establish  the  earlier  limit  by  that  method 
I  have  always  decried  elsewhere,  namely,  by  dating  the 
whole  by  the  date  of  various  passages.  The  answer  is 
that  in  the  case  of  The  Duchess  of  Malfl  and  A  Monu- 
mental  Column  the  borrowings  from  other  authors  are 
so  numerous,  so  widespread,  and  so  much  part  of  the 
whole  play,  that  the  likelihood  of  them  having  all  been 
introduced  in  revision  is  very  small.  Such  a  revision 
would  have  to  be  a  complete  rewriting  of  the  play.  And 
while  we  must  allow  for  the  possibility  of  revision  in  any 
Elizabethan  play,  we  cannot  suppose  that  the  writers  of 
that  age  took  the  trouble  to  rewrite  their  plays,  in  tone, 
from  beginning  to  end. 


APPENDICES  251 

Sources, 

It  Is  certain  that  Webster  got  the  story  of  The  Duch- 
ess of  Malfi  from  Painter's  Palace  of  Pleasure,  Novel 
XXIII.  Painter  had  it  from  Belleforest,  who  had  it 
from  Bandello.  A  recent  Italian  book  shews  that  Ban- 
dello  probably  based  his  account  on  the  testimony  of 
actors  in  the  actual  events,  and  suggests  that  he  may 
even  have  been  himself  one  of  them,  the  one  whom  we 
know  as  Delio.^    It  is  an  alluring  speculation. 

Beyond  this,  the  tortures  of  the  Duchess  were  sug- 
gested, probably,  by  incidents  in  Sidney's  Arcadia.  The 
same  book,  which  gave  Webster  so  much  even  in  phrases 
and  sentences,  may  have  been  responsible  for  much  in 
the  Duchess's  character,  and  for  the  echo-scene  (V.  3). 
These  are  less  certain.  Mr.  Crawford  with  greater 
probability  thinks  that  V.  1.,  the  scene  of  Delio's  and 
Julia's  suits  to  Pescara,  was  suggested  from  Montaigne, 
Book  1.2 

State  of  the  Play. 

I  have  already  explained  some  of  the  reasons  for 
thinking  there  was  a  revival  of  The  Duchess  of  Malfi 
in  the  latter  half  of  1617.  They  are,  briefly,  these. 
The  first  fifty  lines  of  the  play  obviously  refer  to  events 
which  happened  in  France  in  April  1617,  and  roused 
immediate  interest  in  England.     They  could  not  have 

^  Giovanna  d'Aragona,  Duchessa  d'Amalfi,  da  Domenico  Morel- 
lini,  1906.  V.  review  by  W.  W.  Greg  in  Modern  Language  Re- 
view, July  1907. 

*  Collectanea,  ii.  pp.  14,  15. 


252  JOHN  WEBSTER 

been  written  after  about  May  1618,  when  these  events 
were  seen  in  a  quite  different  light.  Also,  the  chaplain 
to  the  Venetian  Ambassador  in  England  has  left  a  de- 
scription of  a  play  he  saw  in  London,  which  is  probably, 
but  not  certainly.  The  Duchess  of  Malfi}  He  did  not 
get  to  London  before  the  beginning  of  October  1617, 
and  he  seems  to  have  seen  the  play  a  little  time  before 
the  7th  February  1618. 

The  Actors'  list  in  the  first  edition  allows  of  a  revival 
of  this  date. 

The  Duchess  of  Malfi,  then,  was  revived  in  a  revised 
form  in  the  latter  part  of  1617.  That  the  beginning 
of  the  play  was  revised  we  know.  If  the  Italian  chap- 
lain's account  of  the  play  be  accurate,  there  must  have 
been  a  good  deal  in  the  performance  he  saw  which  is 
not  in  the  play  as  we  have  it — even  allowing  for  his 
misinterpretation. 

One  passage  in  the  play  itself  may  point  to  a  com- 
bination of  two  versions.  In  I.  1.,  (p.  61)  Delio  use- 
fully questions  Antonio  about  the  other  chief  charac- 
ters. Antonio  gives  a  long  description  of  the  Cardinal ; 
then  a  long  description  of  the  Duke,  his  brother ;  then, 
before  going  on  to  the  Duchess,  he  reverts  suddenly  to 
the  Cardinal,  as  if  he  had  not  mentioned  him,  with: 

**Last,  for  his  brother  there^  the  Cardinal.  .  .  ," 

On  the  other  hand,  the  inclusion  in  the  first  quarto 
(1623)  of  Middleton,  Rowley,  and  Ford's  commenda- 

»  F.  StoU,  p.  29. 


APPENDICES  253 

tory  verses,  and  of  Webster's  dedicatory  letter,  as  well 
as,  and  more  forcibly  than,  the  avowal  of  the  title-page,^ 
go  to  show  that  this  edition  of  the  play  is  as  Webster 
would  have  had  it.  It  must,  therefore,  be  fairly  near 
the  original  version  (1613);  containing  most  of  that, 
with  whatever  of  subsequent  additions  or  changes  Web- 
ster supposed  improvements.  And  we  cannot  doubt 
that  practically  all  of  the  play,  as  we  have  it,  is  by 
Webster. 

*"The  perfect  and  exact  Copy,  with  divers  things  printed,  that 
the  length  of  the  play  would  not  bear  in  presentment." 


Appendix  H. — "A  Monumental  Column" 

Date. 

The  question  of  the  date  of  A  Monumental  Column 
is  discussed  in  Appendix  G  in  connection  with  The 
Duchess  of  Malfi.  It  must  have  been  written  within 
some  six  months  after  November  1612 ;  probably  about 
March  1613. 

Sources. 

There  is,  of  course,  no  special  source  for  a  poem  like 
this.  It  repeats  the  usual  thoughts  in  elegies  of  its 
kind ;  and  borrows  largely  in  expressions  and  in  general 
style  from  Donne ;  also  from  Sidney,  Chapman,  and  Ben 
Jonson. 


254 


Appendix  I.— "The  Devil's  Law-Case" 

Date, 

The  DeviVs  Law-Case  was  published  in  1623.  There 
is  little  evidence  to  decide  the  date  of  its  writing. 

(1)  There  is  a  reference  (IV.  2)  to  an  affray  in  the 
East  Indies : 

"How!  go  to  the  East  Indies!  and  so  many  Hollanders 
gone  to  fetch  sauce  for  their  pickled  herrings! 
Some  have  been  peppered  there  too  lately." 

This  almost  certainly  refers  to  a  Dutch  attack  in 
August  1619  on  some  English  ships  engaged  in  loading 
pepper.  News  seems  to  have  taken  from  nine  to  fifteen 
months  to  travel  between  England  and  the  East  Indies. 
London  might  learn,  then,  of  this  pepper  business  any 
time  in  the  latter  half  of  1620.  The  word  "lately," 
and  still  more  the  comparative  unimportance  and  tran- 
sience of  the  event,  suggest  that  the  form  of  the  play  in 
which  this  sentence  occurred  was  being  acted  towards 
the  end  of  1620  or  in  the  first  half  of  1621.  If  that 
form  was  the  only  form,  we  cannot  tell ;  and  we  have  no 
right  to  assume  it.  The  whole  of  the  reference  to  the 
East  Indies  is  comprised  in  a  few  sentences  in  this  one 
place.  It  is  entirely  unnecessary  to  the  plot,  and  it 
could  easily  have  been  inserted  at  a  moment's  notice. 

255 


256  JOHN  WEBSTER 

(2)  It  is  said  that  the  chief  idea  in  the  play,  Leo- 
nora's attempt  to  bastardise  her  son  by  confessing  a 
long-past  adultery  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  never  took 
place,  resembles  stories  in  the  pseudo-Marlovian  Lusfs 
Dominion,  The  Spanish  Curate,  by  Fletcher  and  Mas- 
singer,  and  The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Inn,  by  Massinger 
and  another.  The  Fair  Maid  of  the  Inn  was  probably 
not  written  before  1624.  The  Spanish  Curate  was  writ- 
ten between  March  and  October  1622.  It  is  only  just 
possible  that  The  DeviVs  Law-Case  can  have  been  writ- 
ten after  it.^  Gerardo  the  Unfortunate  Spaniard,  an 
English  translation  from  the  Spanish,  which  appeared 
in  March  1622  and  was  the  source  of  The  Spanish 
Curate,  may  also  have  suggested  this  part  of  The 
DeviTs  Law-Case.  But  resemblances  are  tricky  things. 
This  one,  closely  examined,  turns  out  to  depend  largely 
on  having  the  confession  of  a  past  misdemeanour  at  a 
public  trial.  And  to  bring  in  a  public  trial  is  exactly 
the  thing  that  would  independently  occur  to  the  mind  of 
a  dramatist  of  circa  1620,  if  he  imagined  or  heard  of 
the  rest  of  the  story.  The  only  resemblance  that  really 
may  mean  anything  is  to  Lusfs  Dominion,  where  a 
widow  has  a  grudge  against  her  son,  because  of  a  man 
she  is  in  love  with.  So,  to  defame  him  and  deprive  him 
of  the  inheritance,  she  invents,  with  details,  and  publicly 
confesses,  a  story  which  makes  him  a  bastard.  The 
motives  and  feelings  of  the  characters  in  this  play  cor- 
respond far  more  than  in  those  others,  to  The  DeviTs 
Law-Case  situation.     It  is  true  Lusfs  Dominion  is  an 

»  V.  StoU,  p.  32. 


APPENDICES  257 

old  play  of  1590.  But  it  may  have  been  revived  and 
revised  many  times.  Perhaps  it  "suggested"  the  idea 
of  The  DeviVs  Law-Case — in  any  of  the  million  ways, 
direct  and  indirect,  in  which,  in  real  life,  ideas  are  sug- 
gested. But  the  truth  is  that,  unless  a  very  certain 
source  is  known,  the  search  for  the  suggestion  of  so 
unexotic  an  idea  as  this  becomes  rather  foolish.  A  half- 
remembered  story,  a  friend's  anecdote,  an  inspiration — 
anything  may  be  responsible  for  any  proportion  of  it. 
It  may  be  useful  to  trace  John  Keats'  hippocrene ; 
not  his  porridge. 

(3)^  The  title-page  says  that  the  play  was  "ap- 
provedly  well  acted  by  Her  Majesty's  Servants."  This 
company,  which  also  performed  The  White  Devil,  was 
called  by  this  name  until  March  1619,  when  Queen 
Anne  died.  It  appears  to  have  gone  gradually  to  pieces 
after  that.  Thomas  Heywood,  for  instance,  seems  to 
have  left  it  by  1622.  In  July  1622,  it  was  recon- 
structed, with  children  as  well  as  adults,  as  "The 
Players  of  the  Revels."  It  probably  broke  up  in  the 
next  year.  The  point  is,  under  what  name  did  it  go 
between  1619  and  1622.?  Under  the  old  one  of  "Her 
Majesty's  Servants,"  thinks  Dr.  Stoll.  Mr.  Murray, 
the  latest  investigator  of  the  history  of  the  Dramatic 
Companies,  says  it  was  called  by  the  name  of  "The  Red 
Bull,"  its  theatre.  What  evidence  there  is  seems  to  in- 
dicate this.  The  corresponding  (or  same)  company  on 
tour  was  generally  known  as  "The  late  Queen  Anne's 

*  For  this  paragraph  v.  English  Dramatic  Companies,  1558-1642, 
by  John  Tucker  Murray:  esp.  vol.  i.  pp.  193-200. 


258  JOHN  WEBSTER 

players."  We  should  have  expected  one  of  these  two 
latter  names,  if  the  play  had  been  performed  only  be- 
tween 1619  and  1622.  This  consideration  by  itself 
makes  a  slight,  a  quite  slight,  probability  of  the  play 
being  acted  before  March  1619. 

Altogether,  therefore,  we  can  only  say  that  the  play 
is  earlier  than  July  1622,  and  was  almost  certainly 
being  acted  in  some  form  in  about  August  1620-July 
1621.  Everything  else  is  quite  uncertain;  except  that 
the  nature  of  the  play  forbids  you  to  look  earlier  than, 
at  earliest,  1610.  The  tiny  probability  of  1620  or 
after,  for  the  whole  play,  established  by  the  East  Indies 
reference,  is  about  balanced  by  the  tiny  probability  of 
before  1619,  established  by  the  name  of  the  Company. 
For  charts  and  lists  one  would  say  1620. 

Sources. 

Perhaps,  for  the  main  idea,  Lusfs  Dominion.  See 
under  Date  (2).  The  episode  of  Romelio's  remedial 
stabbing  is  from  Goulart's  Histoires  Admirahles,  prob- 
ably in  Grimeston's  translation  (1607)  ;  a  source  Web- 
ster used  also  for  his  lycanthropy  in  The  Duchess  of 
Malfi. 

The  State  of  the  Play. 

There  is  no  reason  to  suppose  that  any  part  of  the 
play  is  not  by  Webster,  or  that  it  has  been  much  ab- 
breviated or  revised.  The  title-page  (1623)  avows  it 
"the  true  and  perfect  copy,  from  the  original."  It 
may  be  true.     But  that  the  original  may  have  borne 


APPENDICES  259 

signs  of  alterations  for  stage  purposes,  is  suggested 
by  the  fact  that  (pp.126,  127)  on  three  separate  occa- 
sions in  III.  3,  the  1623  edition  has  "Surgeon"  where 
it  ought  to  be  "Surgeons,"  for  there  were  two  surgeons 
in  the  case.  It  would  have  lessened  the  dramatic  effect 
but  not  hurt  the  plot  to  reduce  these  two  to  one,  and 
it  is  just  the  kind  of  change  that  might  have  been  made 
in  order  to  use  fewer  actors.  Her  Majesty's  Servants 
were  on  the  downhill  when  they  acted  this  play.  And 
if  this  change  was  made  for  acting,  others  may  have 
been. 


Appendix  J. — "A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold" 

Date, 

A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  was  published  in  1661. 

(1)  It  is  necessary  at  one  point  that  a  sea-fight 
should  have  taken  place  and  be  narrated.  The  Enghsh 
merchant-ships  are  reported  to  have  been  attacked  by 
three  Spanish  men-of-war,  off  Margate.  From  its  style 
this  play  must  date  from  the  end  of  James',  or  from 
Charles',  reign.  At  any  period  the  dramatist  would  be 
likely  to  attribute  fighting,  in  a  play  of  contemporary 
life,  to  the  actual  enemies  of  England  of  the  time ;  and 
at  this  period  he  would  be  especially  unlikely  to  offend 
by  suggesting  enmity  with  any  friend  of  the  rulers  of 
the  country.  So  we  may  find  it  probable  these  lines 
were  written  between  1624  and  1630  (inclusive),  when 
England  and  Spain  were  at  war;  not  earlier,  while 
Charles'  fantastic  matrimonial  expedition  was  going  on, 
and  not  later,  when  peace  had  been  patched  up.  The 
fact  that  England  was  more  importantly  at  war  with 
France  from  1627,  tends  a  little  to  narrow  it  to  1624- 
1627.  This  is  a  moderate  proof  of  the  date  of  these 
lines,  or  one  of  them;  a  proportionately  smaller  one, 
therefore,  for  the  whole  play. 

(2)  The  plot  of  "Webster's  portion"  of  A  Cure  for 
a  Cuckold  is  the  same  as,  or  similar  to,  that  of  other 
plays.     It  is  a  particular  form  of  the  favourite  Eliza- 

260 


APPENDICES  261 

bethan  motif,  Mistress — ^Lover — Friend.  On  this  point 
I  have  little  to  add  to  and  not  much  to  subtract  from 
Dr.  Stoll's  arguments.  The  bulk  of  mine  are  a  sum- 
mation of  his.  He  seems  to  me  to  prove  his  point ;  not 
as  conclusively  as  he  believes ;  still,  to  prove  it. 

In  giving  a  synopsis  of  the  relevant  parts  of  the  plots 
of  these  plays  I  shall,  for  clearness'  sake,  call  the  pro- 
tagonist— the  lover — A,  the  friend  F,  and  the  Lady  L. 

(a)  In  Mars  ton's  Dutch  Courtezan  (1604)  L  (a 
courtezan)  and  F  are  in  love  first.  F  chucks  her.  L, 
for  revenge,  encourages  A,  who  has  conceived  an  over- 
whelming passion  for  her;  and  promises  herself  to  him 
if  he  will  kill  F.  A  promises  to  do  so;  on  reflection 
repents,  and  warns  F.  They  agree  on  a  trick  together, 
feign  a  quarrel,  and  pretend  to  fight  a  duel.  F  hides, 
and  is  given  out  as  slain  in  the  duel.  To  punish  A  for 
his  folly  he  hides  also  from  him.  L,  to  complete  her 
vengeance,  has  A  arrested  for  murder.  As  A  finds  he 
cannot  produce  F  to  clear  himself,  he  is  in  a  bad  way. 
At  the  last  moment  F,  present  in  disguise,  reveals  him- 
self. L  is  led  off^  to  prison.  A  is  cured  of  his  passion ; 
and  all  is  for  the  best. 

(b)  In  Massinger's  The  Parliament  of  Love  (1624) 
A  and  L  have  been  contracted  in  marriage ;  A  has,  im- 
patiently, first  proposed,  and  then  forcibly  attempted 
copulation  before  the  marriage-ceremony ;  and  L  is  con- 
sequently possessed  by  hatred  for  him.  The  tale  is  told 
in  four  scenes.  (II.  2)  A  insists  on  seeing  L  and  off*ers 
to  do  anything  she  likes  to  obtain  her  pardon,  and  her. 


262  JOHN  WEBSTER 

She  accepts  the  bargain  and  bids  him  find  out  his  best 
friend  and  kill  him. 

(III.  S)  A  soliloquises  that  he  has  tried  many  friends 
with  a  proposal  and  none  of  them  has  turned  out  a 
true  one.  Enter  F,  who  is  ecstatic  over  an  unhoped 
meeting  with  his  mistress,  which  she  has  appointed  for 
two  hours  hence.  A  is  melancholy  and  tries  to  slip 
away.  F  insists  on  knowing  the  reason.  A  says  he  has 
to  fight  a  duel  shortly,  and  can't  find  a  second.  F  in- 
sists on  coming  as  second,  and  cutting  his  mistress,  in 
spite  of  A's  protestations. 

(IV.  2)  They  arrive  at  the  duel-ground.  A  makes  F 
swear  to  fight  relentlessly;  then  reveals  the  truth,  he 
himself  (A)  is  the  ever  detestable  enemy.  He  insists  on 
fighting,  is  beaten,  but  not  killed. 

(V.  1)  It  is  common  talk  that  A  has  killed  F,  and 
that  L  has  had  A  arrested  for  trial  before  "The  Parlia- 
ment of  Love." 

At  the  trial  A  is  found  guilty  of  murder,  L  of 
cruelty,  and  condemned.  L  repents  and  forgives  A.  F,^ 
supposed  (by  a  trick  arranged,  presumably,  with  A) 
to  be  dead,  rises  from  his  bier.  All  is  put  right,  and  A 
and  L  marry. 

(c)  In  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold,  L  (Clare)  is  secretly  in 
love  with  F  (Bonvile),  who  has  been  married,  on  the 
morning  the  play  begins,  to  somebody  else.  The  tale 
is  told  in  five  scenes. 

(I.  1)  L  is  sad.  A  (Lessingham)  renews  a  previous 
proposal  to  her.     L  will  accept  on  one  condition.     A 


APPENDICES  263 

agrees.  L  tells  him  it  is  to  find  out  and  kill  his  best 
friend. 

(I.  2)  A  soliloquises.  Enter  some  friends,  and  de- 
mand the  reason  of  A's  sadness.  A  says  he  must  fight  a 
duel  next  morning  at  Calais,  and  has  no  second ;  sec- 
onds to  fight.  He  asks  each  to  be  his  second.  They  re- 
fuse and  exeunt.  Enter  F ;  demands  to  know  the  reason 
of  A's  sadness.  A  reluctantly  explains.  F  offers  to 
come,  and  cut  his  wedding-night.  A  protests.  F  in- 
sists, in  spite  of  the  arrival  on  the  scene  of  his  newly- 
married  wife. 

(III.  1)  They  arrive  at  the  duel-ground.  A  says 
he  has  come  to  fight  an  innocent  enemy ;  i.e.  F,  he  re- 
veals. And  he  is  so  deep  in  love,  he  says,  he  must  kill 
him.  F  quibbles  that  as  a  "friend"  he  now  is  dead. 
They  part. 

(IV.  2)  A  reports  to  L  F's  death.  L  confesses  her 
unhappy  love  for  F  and  declares  herself  overjoyed.  A 
turns  against  her. 

After  some  complications  with  the  other  part  of  the 
plot, 

(V.  2)  A  and  L  are  reconciled,  and  marry. 

Before  we  can  proceed  to  the  comparison  of  these 
plots  there  is  one  point  in  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  to  be 
got  clear.  That  is,  Clare's  motive  in  giving  Lessing- 
ham  the  command.  There  are  various  remarks  about 
it  in  the  play.  In  I.  2,  Lessingham,  in  his  soliloquy, 
rather  meekly  wonders  "what  might  her  hidden  purpose 
be  in  this?"  He  can  only  suggest  that  she  has  a  psy- 
chological interest  in  proving  the  proposition  that  there 


264  JOHN  WEBSTER 

is  no  such  thing  as  friendship.     In  II.  4,  Bonvile's  ab- 
sence is  commented  on.    Clare,  in  an  aside,  says : 

I  fear  myself  most  guilty  for  the  absence 
Of  the  bridegroom.     What  our  wills  will  do 
With  over-rash  and  headlong  peevishness 
To  bring  our  calm  discretions  to  repentance! 
Lessingham's  mistaken,  quite  out  o'  the  way 
Of  my  purpose,  too. 

In  III.  1,  in  the  dialogue  between  the  friends,  Lessing- 
ham  has  a  new  reason  to  suggest : 

.  .  .  She  loathes  me,  and  has  put. 

As  she  imagines,  this  impossible  task. 
For  ever  to  be  quit  and  free  from  me. 

In  III.  3.  When  the  news  comes  that  Bonvile  is  at 
Calais,  as  Lessingham's  "second,"  Clare  guesses  the 
truth,  and  cries,  aside  again: 

0  fool  Lessingham 
Thou  hast  mistook  my  injunction  utterly. 
Utterly  mistook  it !  .  .  . 

1  fear  we  both  are  lost. 

In  IV.  2.  Lessingham  reports  to  Clare  that  he  has 
fulfilled  her  injunctions. 

Clare.   Then  of  all  men  you  are  most  miserable : 

Nor  have  you  ought  furthered  your  suit  in  this. 
Though  I  enjoined  you  to  't;  for  I  had  thought 
That  I  had  been  the  best  esteemed  friend 
You  had  i'  the  world. 

Less.      Ye  did  not  wish,  I  hope, 

That  I  should  have  murdered  you. 


APPENDICES  265 

Clare.  You  shall  perceive  more 
Of  that  hereafter.  .  .  . 

She  asks  who  the  slain  friend  is,  and  hears  "Bonvile." 
At  first  she  is  "lost  for  ever."  Then  she  suddenly 
changes  and  professes  great  pleasure,  promises  in- 
stantly to  marry  Lessingham,  because  he  has  rid  her  of 
her  "dearest  friend  and  fatalest  enemy" — she  was  in 
love  with  Bonvile. 

And  beholding  him 
Before  my  face  wedded  unto  another. 
And  all  my  interest  in  him  forfeited, 
I  fell  into  despair;  and  at  that  instant 
You  urging  your  suit  to  me,  and  I  thinking 
That  I  had  been  your  only  friend  i'  the  world, 
I  heartily  did  wish  you  would  have  killed 
That  friend  yourself,  to  have  ended  all  my  sorrow. 
And  had  prepared  it,  that  unwittingly 
You  should  have  done  't  by  poison. 

Later,  Lessingham  turns  against  her,  and  leaves  her. 
She,  in  a  soliloquy,  expresses  great  remorse : 

I  am  every  way  lost,  and  no  means  to  raise  me 
But  blessed  repentance  .  .  . 
.  .  .  Now  I  suffer. 
Deservedly. 

Bonvile  appears.  She  rejoices  to  find  him  alive. 
After  some  conversation — 

Clare   (giving  Bonvile  a  letter) 

.  .  .  had  you  known  this  which  I  meant  to  have 

sent  you. 
An  hour  'fore  you  were  married  to  your  wife. 


266  JOHN  WEBSTER 

The  riddle  had  been  construed. 
Bon.      Strange!     This  expresses 
That  you  did  love  me. 
Clare.  With  a  violent  affection. 

Bon.      Violent  indeed;  for  it  seems  it  was  your  purpose 
To  have  ended  it  in  violence  on  your  friend : 
The  unfortunate  Lessingham  unwittingly 
Should  have  been  the  executioner. 
Clare.  'Tis  true. 

In  V.  2  she  again  expresses  contrition  to  Lessing- 
ham: 

Clare.  It  was  my  cause 

That  you  were  so  possessed;  and  all  these  troubles 
Have  from  my  peevish  will  original; 
I  do  repent,  though  you  forgive  me  not. 

Dr.  Stoll's  impression  is  that  Clare's  motive  is  mainly 
meant  to  be  jealousy  of  Bonvile  (F)  and  a  desire  for 
his  death,  but  that  occasionally  obscurity  comes  in  and 
that  she  seems  to  have  meant  something  else.  As  the 
motive  in  The  Dutch  Courtezan  was  also  jealous  hatred 
of  F,  while  that  in  The  Parliament  of  Love  was  hatred 
of  A,  this  tells  a  little  against  Dr.  StolPs  idea  that  The 
Parliament  of  Love  came  between  The  Dutch  Courtezan 
and  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold.  He  brings  the  "obscurity 
of  motivation"  into  service,  however,  by  an  ingenious 
theory  of  Webster  starting  with  a  plot  where  the  motive 
was  jealousy  of  F,  and  introducing  phrases  and  ideas 
{e.g.  "Kill  for  my  sake  the  friend  that  loves  thee  dear- 
est") from  the  other.  Parliament  of  Love,  motivation 
of  offended  modesty. 


APPENDICES  267 

But  this  will  not  do.  It  is  impossible  to  imagine 
that  Webster  had  a  mind  with  so  extraordinarily  feeble 
a  grasp.  And  an  inspection  of  the  relevant  passages, 
quoted  above,  shows  the  truth.  Lessingham's  own 
conjectures,  of  course,  are  astray.  He  is  meant  not  to 
know  what  Clare  is  at.  The  only  place  which  favours 
the  view  that  her  motive  was  a  jealous  desire  for  Bon- 
vile's  death  is  where  she  confesses  it  to  him,  near  the 
end  of  the  play.  If  this  is  true,  it  is  absolutely  at  vari- 
ance with  the  rest  of  the  play,  which  is  perfectly  con- 
cordant with  itself.  We  do  not  know,  at  the  beg-inningr 
of  the  play,  that  Lessingham's  best  friend  is  Bonvile. 
Nor,  as  far  as  we  can  see,  does  she.  She  once  says,  and 
once  practically  admits,  to  Lessingham,  that  her  com- 
mand really  meant  that  he  was  to  kill  her.  And — which 
far  outweighs  anything  said  to  another  person,  for  that 
might  be  a  lie — she  twice,  in  an  aside,  says  that  Les- 
singham mistook  her  words  and  is  doing  something  she 
did  not  intend.  It  is  perfectly  plain  and  indisputable. 
She  was  not  aiming  at  Bonvile.  Her  remorse  for  her 
folly  was  natural,  and  does  not  demand  the  jealousy-of- 
Bonvile  theory.  And  her  statement  to  Bonvile  must  be 
explained  away. 

It  might  be  suggested  that  it  was  a  desperate  lie,  and 
that  the  whole  thing  is  a  bad  attempt  at  subtle  psychol- 
ogy. Or  much  more  probably,  that  it  is  an  instance 
of  the  dangers  that  lurk  for  collaboration,  especially  if 
it  is  not  contemporaneous ;  and  that  one  of  the  two 
authors,  probably  Rowley,  misunderstood  a  part  of  the 
plot   the   other   was    responsible   for,   and   innocently 


268  JOHN  WEBSTER 

roused  confusion.  But  I  think  the  severer  course  of 
emendation  can  be  shown  to  be  absolutely  necessary. 

For  if  you  look  at  the  passage  (the  last  one  quoted 
from  IV.  2)  you  will  see  it  is  really  impossible  that 
"your  friend"  can  refer  to  Bonvile,  as  it  seems  to.  It 
makes  nonsense  of  the  whole  passage!  For  in  that 
case  all  the  information  he  gets  from  the  letter  is  that 
she  loves  him.  And  how  would  that  have  construed  "the 
riddle .?"  For  the  "riddle"  included,  by  this  hypothesis, 
her  queer  injunction  to  Lessingham  and  its  hidden  in- 
tention to  end  in  Bonvile's  death ;  all  of  which  Bonvile 
would  be  ignorant  of,  an  hour  before  his  marriage,  and 
which  she'd  be  scarcely  likely  to  reveal  to  him !  More- 
over, what  does  "unwittingly"  mean!  How  do  you 
kill  a  man  "unwittingly,"  if  you  challenge  him  to  a  duel 
in  order  to  kill  him.?    The  whole  thing  is  mad. 

Of  course,  some  small  change  has  to  he  made  in  the 
text.  Either  "on  your  friend"  must  be  changed  to  "on 
yourself" ;  or,  more  probably,  "and"  should  be  read  for 
"on,"  and  the  whole  should  be  punctuated : 

"To  have  ended  it  with  violence ;  and  your  friend. 
The  unfortunate  Lessingham^  unwittingly,"  etc. 


and  the  whole  tale  is  this.  She  gives  him  a  letter  which 
he  was  to  have  opened  just  before  his  marriage.  He 
reads  it.  It  tells  him,  first,  that  she  loved  him.  He 
goes  on  reading,  "Violent,  indeed;  ...  for  it  seems 
.  .  ."  It  seems,  from  the  letter,  that  she  had  intended 
to  "end"   (the  word  fits,  by  this  interpretation)   her 


APPENDICES  209 

violent  love  with  violence  on  herself.  She  was  going  to 
have  had  poison  given  her.  And  Lessingham  was  go- 
ing to  have  done  it,  "unwittingly."  She  has  told  Les- 
singham the  whole  story  five  minutes  before  (p.  309) 
in  the  same  scene  (v.  the  preceding  quotation  but  one). 
She  even  used  the  same  word,  "unwittingly."  Bonvile 
was  to  have  learnt  of  her  love  and  of  her  death  at  the 
same  moment,  and  "the  riddle  had  been  construed." 

I  have  spent  some  time  over  this  point  in  order  to 
show  that  Webster  (or  Webster  and  Rowley)  is  per- 
fectly clear  in  his  motivation  in  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold^ 
and  that  the  motive  was  this.  For  it  removes  the  only 
argument  in  favour  of  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  preceding 
The  Parliament  of  Love;  and  it  may  counteract  the  im- 
pression that  might  be  produced  by  Dr.  Stoll's  harping 
on  Webster's  inability  to  make  a  plot  with  coherence 
or  even  normal  sanity. 

To  go  back  to  the  comparison  of  Massinger's,  Mar- 
ston's,  and  Webster's  plays ;  when  they  are  summarised 
in  that  way,  it  becomes  immediately  obvious  either  that 
there  is  some  special  connection  between  The  Parliament 
of  Love  and  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold,  or  that  they  have 
a  common  source  other  than  The  Dutch  Courtezan: 
There  are  so  many  similarities ;  the  whole  dramatisation 
of  the  tale  and  division  into  scenes,  the  "dearest  friend" 
command,  the  search  for  him  under  pretext  of  asking 
for  a  second  in  a  duel,  the  unsuccessful  application  to 
other  friends,  F  cutting  his  mistress,  the  duel  scene, 
the  supposed  death  of  F,  and  so  on.     They  cannot  pos- 


270  JOHN  WEBSTER 

sibly  have  arisen  from  independent  study  of  Marston's 
play. 

There  may  have  been  an  intermediate  step,  a  source, 
perhaps,  in  the  first  twenty  years  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  and,  if  so,  probably  founded  on  Marston's 
play.  Dr.  Stoll  does  not  consider  the  possibility  of  this. 
But  we  cannot  rule  it  out.  It  would  explain  the  general 
similarity,  with  such  differences  of  motivation,  etc.,  in 
Webster's  and  Massinger's  plays.  This  intermediate 
source  must  have  been  either  itself  a  play  or  a  story 
that  fell  very  easily  and  necessarily  into  certain  scenes, 
as  an  apparently  whole,  already  carved,  chicken  drops, 
as  soon  as  you  touch  it,  into  neatly  severed  limbs. 
More  than  this  one  cannot  say.  There  is  little  proof 
for  or  against  an  intermediate  source.  One  can  only 
admit  its  possibility. 

But  if  only  these  three  plays  are  left  us,  which  was 
intermediate.  The  Parliament  of  Love  or  A  Cure  for  a 
Cuckold?  The  former  is  nearer  to  The  Dutch  Courte- 
zan  in  one  point,  the  law-case  at  the  end,  in  which  L 
accuses  A ;  the  latter  in  no  point.  This  is  some  evidence, 
but  not  so  strong  as  it  seems,  for  the  law-case  at  the 
end  of  The  Parliament  of  Love  is  required  anyhow  by 
the  whole  plot,  independently  of  this  part.  Then  there 
are  certain  differences  in  treatment  that  may  be  signifi- 
cant. Webster  comments  on  the  strangeness  of  the 
seconds  having  to  fight  in  the  duel.  Massinger  accepts 
it  without  comment.  Dr.  Stoll  thinks  this  a  proof  that 
Webster  was  the  later.  To  me  it  seems  more  likely  that 
the  inventor  of  the  story  should  have  commented  on  a 


APPENDICES  271 

detail  like  this,  and  the  man  who  took  the  story  over, 
accepted  it.  Again,  Webster  directly  presents  A  try- 
ing several  friends  in  vain  before  he  tries  F ;  Massinger 
only  relates  it.  Is  it  more  likely  that  Webster  drama- 
tised what  Massinger  reported,  or  that  Massinger  made 
indirect  what  Webster  gave  directly  .^  The  former,  I 
think ;  so  that  this  piece  of  evidence  favours  Massinger 
being  the  intermediary.  Dr.  Stoll  suggests  several 
pieces  of  more  general  evidence.  (1)  A  Cure  for  a 
Cuckold  shows  the  influence  of  Fletcher  and  Massinger. 
This  would  have  happened  if  Webster  had  been  imi- 
tating The  Parliament  of  Love.  Therefore  he  was  imi- 
tating it.  (2)  Webster  could  not  have  invented  so 
dramatic  a  sequence  of  scenes  himself;  and  Massinger — • 
and  only  Massinger — could.  (3)  Webster's  muddling 
of  motivation  shows  that  he  was  trying  to  work  The 
Parliament  of  Love  motives  into  a  different  plot.  (4) 
The  mass  of  word-play  and  quibbling  in  Webster  shows 
he  was,  later,  an  embroiderer.  (5)  Some  of  the  later 
invented  incidents,  e.g.,  the  duel-scene,  and  also  the 
struggle  in  A's  soul,  are  Massingerish. 

These  are  not  really  at  all  strong.  (1)  is  bad  logic. 
Webster  would  have  shown — and  did  show — the  influ- 
ence of  the  time  anyhow.  (2)  These  generalisations 
about  Webster's  capabilities,  founded  on  such  small 
data,  are  very  dangerous.  Possibly  Webster  could 
have  invented  these  scenes.  Certainly  Rowley,  his  col- 
laborator, could.  Massinger  was  not  the  only  person. 
(3)  I  have  disposed  of.     (4)  has  some  weight:  but  as 


272  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Webster  was  fond  of  these  queer  notions  and  verbal 
tricks  (he  still  kept  something  of  his  heritage  from 
Donne),  and  Massinger  was  less  fond,  it  is  not  very  con- 
vincing. (5)  also  has  a  Httle  weight,  but  it  is  again 
dangerous  to  suppose  that  Webster  and  Rowley,  writ- 
ing in  the  manner  of  Massinger's  period,  could  not  have 
caught  something  of  that  very  second-rate  magic.  In 
any  case  the  struggle  in  A's  soul  comes  in  The  Dutch 
Courtezan,  and  ex  hypothesi  Webster  could  have  used 
it,  even  if  he  hadn't  the  brains  to  think  of  it. 

Parts  of  some  of  these  arguments,  it  may  also  be 
worth  remarking,  especially  of  (2)  and  (5),  depend  on 
The  Dutch  Courtezan,  or  something  equally  remote, 
being  the  immediate  source  of  whichever  of  The  Parlior 
ment  of  Love  and  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  was  the  earlier. 

So  far  there  has  been  a  little  evidence  of  the  priority 
of  Massinger's  play.  Dr.  Stoll  advances  one  more 
proof.  He  shows  the  evolution  of  various  fragments  of 
the  Dutch  Courtezan — Parliament  of  Love  story, 
through  forms  that  must  have  been  familiar  to  Massin- 
ger. To  begin  with,  there  is  The  Scornful  Lady  (1609, 
or  10)  by  Beaumont  and  Fletcher.  Massinger,  who  was 
a  close  student  of  their  work,  must  have  known  it.  In 
this  play  the  elder  Loveless  has  forced  a  kiss  in  public 
from  the  Lady.  She  condemns  him  to  face  the  Channel, 
a  year  in  France,  and  a  French  mistress.  He  goes  and 
soon  returns  in  disguise,  to  report  his  own  death :  which 
scares  her,  for  a  minute,  into  confessing  that  she  did 
love  him.      There  is  really  very  little  of  relevance  in 


APPENDICES  273 

this :  far  less  than  Dr.  Stoll  makes  out.*     But  it  has  a 
certain  resemblance  to  The  Parliament  of  Love. 

The  next  instance  is  more  interesting.  The  Little 
French  Lawyer  (1619  or  20),  by  Fletcher  and  Massin- 
ger,  has  a  variant  of  the  story.  In  this,  A  and  F  are 
going,  as  principal  and  second,  to  fight  a  duel.  L  gives 
A  a  sudden  command,  which  will  cause  him  to  cut  the 
duel  and  sacrifice  his  friend.  There  is  the  struggle  be- 
tween love  and  friendship,  in  A's  breast.  Love  wins. 
This  is  a  curious  modification  of  the  other  theme;  but 
the  similarity  is  not  really  great.  There  are  minor  de- 
tails of  resemblance,  which  Dr.  Stoll  brings  out  clearly,^ 
though  he  exaggerates  the  main  points.  Most,  at  least, 
of  this  story  in  The  Little  French  Lawyer,  comes  in 
Massinger's  portion  of  the  play.^ 

These  two  steps  do  not  amount  to  much,  but  they 
help  a  little.     We  can  see  that  Massinger's  mind  was 

*  Dr.  Stoll's  great  fault  is  that  he  is  given  to  pressing  evidence, 
carelessly  and  unfairly,  in  his  own  direction.  He  is  too  eager  to 
prove  a  case.  In  this  instance,  a  notable  one,  he  says,  that  the  elder 
Loveless  "elicits"  from  the  Lady,  "a  rueful  declaration,  like  Leo- 
nora's in  the  Parliament  of  Love,  that  were  he  alive  she  would 
marry  him."  It  is  a  concoction  of  untruths.  All  the  Lady  says  is 
that  if  she  had  been  warned  when  Loveless  was  setting  out,  "these 
two  arms  had  been  his  sea."  As  for  Leonora  she  says  nothing  of 
the  kind.  All  she  says  is  that,  rather  than  that  Cleremond  be  exe- 
cuted and  she  live  and  die  an  anchoress  in  an  eight-foot  room  built 
on  his  grave,  she'll  marry  him.  Cleremond  is  not  dead,  and  nobody 
thinks  he  is.  Perhaps  Dr.  Stoll  was  thinking  of  Bellisant,  who 
is  driven  by  the  supposed  death  of  Montrose  to  confess  she  loved 
him.    But  that  belongs  to  another  part  of  the  plot. 

'Stoll,  168-170. 

*i.e.,  in  Act.  I.     (C.  H.  E.  L.  VI,  pp.  139,  9). 


274  JOHN  WEBSTER 

familiar  with  variants  of  the  story  and  similar  situa- 
tions. Since  a  comparison  of  his  variant  and  Webster's 
has  also  made  it  seem  more  likely  that  Webster  imitated 
him,  we  may  conclude  that  if  The  Dutch  Courtezan, 
The  Parliament  of  Love,  and  A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  are 
the  only  plays  in  the  matter,  that  was  probably  the 
order  in  which  they  were  written.  The  Parliament  of 
Love  was  licensed  in  November  1624,  so  1625 — is,  by 
this  department  of  the  evidence,  a  probable  date. 

We  can  only  say  then  that  this  play  was  very  likely 
written  between  1625  and  1642;  and  rather  more  prob- 
ably before  1630  than  after. 


QUESTIONS  OF  AUTHOESHIP 

A  Cure  for  a  Cuckold  was  first  printed  in  1661  by 
Kirkman,  as  by  Webster  and  Rowley.  This  evidence 
is  of  very  little  value.  That  Webster's  hand  is  to  be 
found  faintly  in  several  parts  of  the  play  is  shown  with 
probabihty  but  not  certainty,  by  Dr.  Stoll.^  His 
parallel  passages  seem  to  be  the  only  proofs  of  his  thai? 
have  any  validity.  Beyond  this  we  can  say  nothing; 
except  that  the  under-plot,  the  Compass  affair,  is  prob- 
ably not  by  Webster,  and  certainly  might  be  by  Rowley. 
How  much  share  Rowley  or  anybody  else  had  in  the 
other  part  of  the  play,  cannot  be  settled,  at  least  with- 
out much  more  minute  investigation  than  this  problem 
has  yet  received.     Mr.  Spring-Rice's  and  Mr.  Gosse's 

» Pp.  37-41. 


APPENDICES  275 

subtraction  of  the  main  plot  of  the  play,  and  publica- 
tion of  it  by  itself  (as  by  Webster),  satisfies  one's  ar- 
tistic feeling,  more  than  one's  desire  for  correct  attribu- 
tion. 


7 


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278  JOHN  WEBSTER 

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I^Lowell,  J.  R.     The  Old  Dramatists.     Webster.     1892. 

MacCracken,  L.  A  Page  of  Forgotten  History.  1911- 
{i.e.  The  Story  of  Vittoria.) 

Meiners,  Martin.  Metrische  Untersuchungen  iiber  den 
Dramatiker,  John  Webster.     1893. 

Michaelis,  S.  The  Admirable  History  of  the  Passion  and 
Conversion  of  a  Penitent  Woman,  seduced  by  a  Magi- 
cian.     1613. 

Murray,  J.  Tucker.  English  Dramatic  Companies,  1585- 
1642.     2  vols.,  1910. 

Painter,  W.    Palace  of  Pleasure.     1566.     Two  volumes. 

Pierce,  F.  E.  The  Collaboration  of  Webster  and  Dehher. 
1909.  Reviewed  by  Dr.  P.  Aronstein  in  Beiblatt  sur 
Anglia,  1910,  p.  79- 

Rich,  Barnabe.    New  Description  of  Ireland.     I6IO. 

Scheffler,  W.     Thomas  Dehher  als  Dramatiher.     1910. 

Sidney,  Sir  Philip.    Arcadia.     1590. 

Stoll,  E.  E.  John  Webster.  The  Periods  of  his  Worh. 
1905.  Reviewed  by  W.  W.  Greg  in  Modern  Language 
Review,  Oct.  I906. 

Swinburne,  A.  C.  The  Age  of  Shahespeare.  1908.  John 
Webster, 


282  JOHN  WEBSTER 

Swinburne,   A,    C.      Prologue   to   the   Duchess   of   Malfy. 

Nineteenth  Century,  1899- 

Studies  in  Prose  and  Poetry.     John  Webster,  1894. 

Symonds,  J.  A.     Italian  Byways.      1883.     Vittoria  Acco- 

ramboni. 

Reprinted  in  his  Studies  in  Italy  and  Greece.     Second 

Series. 
The  Repentance  of  Nathaniel  Tindall  that  hilled  his  mother. 

July  2,  1624. 

A  most  bloody  and  unmatchahle  murder  committed  in 

Whitechapel    by    Nathaniel     Tindall    upon    his    own 

mother,  written  by  John  Morgan. 

(I  cannot  find  either  of  these  in  the  British  Museum. 

They  may  not  be  extant.) 
Vaughan,  C.  E.     Tourneur  and  Webster.     Article  in  Cam- 
bridge History  of  English  Literature,  vol.  vi. 

Reviewed,   Aronstein    in   Beiblatt   zur   Anglia,   April 

1911. 
Vopel,  C.     John  Webster.     1888. 
Wurzbach,     Wolfgang     von.        Jahrbuch     der     deutschen 

Shakespeare-Gesellschaft.     1898.     John  Webster. 


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